Mitek: Transferring a balance is as easy as taking a picture.

Mitek, already a player in mobile payments with solutions that allow bank customers to deposit checks or pay bills by taking a picture of them, moved deeper into mobile banking this week with a solution that lets banks acquire new customers via smartphone.

The solution allows a smartphone user to take a photo of a participating bank competitor’s credit card coupon and send it to the bank, which can then instantly offer better terms or interest rate. If the customer accepts the offer, with just one more click the balance transfer process can begin.

This interaction is a major tool in banks’ balance transfer programs, allowing real-time customer interaction and taking advantage of that impulsive moment when the bank has the complete attention of the smartphone user.

The combination of mobile imaging and banking is a powerful one. Cutting out the traditional input method – typing is never fun on a smartphone – banks can now offer a range of services that suit the customer and ride on the back of consumer power.

Mitek knows it has a winner in its photo-enabled mobile apps. Earlier this year, it opened up its APIs to allow developers to embed photo image input across a wider range of applications (CP: Mitek enabling camera phone image input across dozens of mobile apps).

Using tools such as bar code scanning, customers can now compare prices in one store with prices in nearby stores. They are also checking whether the store that they are in is offering a cheaper deal on their web site, through a mobile app or on their Facebook page. If they are, then the store assistant is in for a tough few minutes and the customer will get the best deal.

It seems that, whether you are a bank or a retail store, there is about five seconds in which the customer’s attention is complete. Already this tiny period of time is being exploited by disruptive online retailers offering context based offers and it seems that banks have now caught on to the impulsive moment where a simple, clear offer can be made and accepted without doing more than pointing and clicking.

Simple solutions but are open to risk (CP: Mobile apps fail miserably at security but added security comes at what cost?). With security issues looming over the success of mobile money generally, Mitek at least takes the issue very seriously. With their solutions, check images are never stored on the phone and for information that must reside in the device temporarily a state of the art 128 bit encryption key is used.

With apps like these, retailers, banks and telcos can really fight for the customer’s attention.