Abrigo Taps Mitek to Protect Bank Clients Against Check Fraud

Abrigo Taps Mitek to Protect Bank Clients Against Check Fraud

Digital identity verification company Mitek announced a new partner today. The California-based company has teamed up with compliance, credit risk, and lending solutions company Abrigo to help the firm’s bank clients access technology to help protect themselves against financial crime.

Specifically, Abrigo is seeking to mitigate check fraud, which is not only prevalent among banks, but is also costly. While the technology behind paper checks seems antiquated, fraud techniques for the payment method are not. According to FinCEN, check fraud suspicious activity report (SAR) filings increased 94% over the course of 2021. Last year, the number of SAR filings exceeded 680,000. “The sophistication of fraud and synthetic checks has never been more concerning,” explained Mitek SVP and GM Michael Diamond. 

Abrigo will offer its bank customers access to Mitek’s Check Fraud Defender to help them stop fraudulent activities around checks. Mitek’s Check Fraud Defender uses imaging science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze the images of the checks and verify authenticity to reduce fraud losses.

“By combining Mitek’s cutting-edge technology with Abrigo’s industry-leading platform, we can provide our 2,400 customers with a powerful solution to help protect their institutions and customers from financial crimes,” said Abrigo CEO Jay Blandford.

Mitek was founded in 1986 and offers technology for mobile check deposit, new account opening, identity verification, and more. The company’s solutions are used by more than 7,900 organizations and its mobile check deposit and account opening tools reach more than 80 million consumers. Mitek is publicly listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker MITK and has a current market capitalization of $517 million.

Earlier this fall, Mitek partnered with Equifax to advance the company’s biometric authentication and liveness detection capabilities.


Photo by cottonbro studio

Mitek Launches Biometric ID Technology Combining Face and Voice Authentication

Mitek Launches Biometric ID Technology Combining Face and Voice Authentication
  • Mitek launched its new biometric authentication solution, MiPass, that leverages both voice and facial recognition.
  • The new technology provides advantages over both passwords and solutions that rely on on-device stored biometrics.
  • Mitek’s MiPass can be deployed in a range of use cases ranging from simple password resets to high-value transactions.

Could the end of passwords finally be at hand?

Identity verification innovator Mitek has launched a new solution designed to enable individuals to access digital accounts easily and securely by leveraging facial and voice recognition technology together. MiPass, unveiled today, offers a passwordless identity authentication solution that only requires a selfie and a recorded phrase to provide a level of convenience and security greater than that provided by authentication solutions based on face- or voice-recognition alone.

“MiPass provides the highest level of digital security available today,” Mitek CTO Steve Ritter said. “MiPass combines voice and face recognition using sophisticated liveness detection technology to defend against digital and deepfake attacks in real time.”

Using MiPass to authenticate digital identity also poses less risk than other solutions that rely on on-device stored biometrics, which Mitek states can be compromised, shared, or even overwritten. Additionally, MiPass’ algorithms have been tested against balanced and representative data sets to avoid bias. As such, the technology accurately authenticates users regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity. Mitek also offers a developer-friendly SDK to make it easy for companies to embed MiPass for use cases ranging from account information updates and password resets to high-risk financial transactions.

“Companies care about their customers’ trust and security more than anything,” Mitek Head of Product Chris Briggs said. “Mitek understands this. That’s why we focus all our attention on bringing products to market that enable trusted online access. People are most loyal to companies that offer both convenience and security. That’s where MiPass excels.”

A Finovate alum for more than a decade, Mitek most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateFall 2017. In the years since then, the company has grown into a digital access leader trusted by 99% of U.S. banks for mobile check deposits and 7,500 of the world’s largest organizations.

Earlier this year, Mitek acquired fellow Finovate alum HooYu for $110 million (£‎98 million). The acquisition came a year after Mitek had purchased another fellow Finovate alum, ID R&D, for $49 million. This summer, the company reported record revenues for the fiscal third quarter, with a 24% year over year gain, and announced the launch of its Mitek Verified Identity Platform (MiVIP).

Headquartered in San Diego, California, and founded in 1985, Mitek is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker MITK. The firm has a market capitalization of $456 million.


Photo by Nita

Fintech Merger and Acquisition Activity Starts Strong in Q1 2022

Fintech Merger and Acquisition Activity Starts Strong in Q1 2022

While 2021 was a record year for fintech merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, 2022 is off to a great start.

According to FT Partners, there were 1,485 M&A deals in the fintech space totaling $348.5 billion in 2021. As Square’s $29 billion takeover of Afterpay demonstrated, last year’s massive volume is partially thanks to multiple large deals.

This quarter, only eight of the 21 deals initiated disclosed financial details. Of those, the deal volume added up to almost $5 billion.

January

February

March

While experts predict that 2022 M&A activity will likely see momentum from 2021, there are two aspects to watch out for this year. First, we will not see as many SPACs as we saw last year. This may decrease the number of companies choosing to exit this year. Second, fintech valuations are deflating after experiencing huge rises over the course of the past two years. While the loss in value won’t directly impact the number of M&A deals, it will decrease the deal volume.


Photo by Martin Lopez

Mitek Agrees to Acquire UK-Based KYC Technology Innovator HooYu

Mitek Agrees to Acquire UK-Based KYC Technology Innovator HooYu
  • Digital identity verification and fraud prevention innovator Mitek has agreed to acquire KYC technology company HooYu.
  • Mitek will pay $129 million (£98 million) for the U.K.-based company.
  • Both firms are Finovate alums. Mitek made its most recent appearance at FinovateFall 2017. HooYu demoed its technology on the Finovate stage most recently at FinovateEurope 2018.

Mitek’s agreement to acquire KYC technology specialist HooYu will help businesses verify their customer’s identity via a combination of biometric verification and real-time bureau and sanction database checks. Enabling institutions to leverage biometrics, ID document validation, geolocation, and identity confidence scoring with bureau checks and sanction list reviews will help them secure a more complete picture of their consumers.

HooYu’s ability to coordinate these features will not only enhance the identity verification process for Mitek’s customers, the technology will also enable them to optimize workflows and empower companies to deploy identity solutions across channels faster.

“Having a single platform that easily orchestrates and configures a KYC journey to manage identities and identify bad actors is becoming a prerequisite for any business transacting digitally,” HooYu CEO Keith Marsden said. “Bringing together Mitek’s lead in identity, liveness, and biometrics, with our orchestration, configuration, and journey services simplifies identity management for financial institutions.”

Mitek’s acquisition of HooYu comes in the context of a global digital identity solutions market that is expected to grow from $23.3 billion in 2021 to $49.5 billion by 2026, a compound annual growth rate of 16.2%. MarketsandMarkets, whose digital identity solutions report was cited by Mitek in this week’s acquisition announcement, credited the rise in both identity-related fraud and data breaches, as well as the need to keep pace with new regulations, for the growth in this market.

Additionally, the rise of the cryptocurrency and NFT (non-fungible token) markets – and the new regulatory regime that will accompany them – puts a further strain on the compliance requirements of businesses. For all the legitimate activity in crypto and NFTs, there is no doubt that these growing markets also represent new opportunities for illicit and criminal behavior.

“Our current geopolitical, commercial, and technological environment represents a perfect storm for bad actors,” Mitek CEO Max Carnecchia said. “Mitek is leading the fight against fraud by providing the technology that businesses need to stamp out digital money launderers and sanctioned individuals.”

In 2018, HooYu demoed its verification technology at FinovateEurope in London. The year before, Mitek demoed its Mobile Verify technology at FinovateFall in New York.


Photo by Ann H

Mitek Acquires ID R&D

Mitek Acquires ID R&D

Identity verification and remote deposit capture solutions provider Mitek has acquired AI-powered biometrics company ID R&D this week. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Under the agreement, Mitek will integrate ID R&D’s portfolio of biometric technologies into its own identity verification solution. Additionally, ID R&D will continue operating under its own brand and will still sell its biometrics products directly to the market. The company’s solutions include IDLive Face, a passive facial liveness detection tool; and IDLive Voice, a voice anti-spoofing technology.

By integrating ID R&D’s technology into its own, Mitek will offer consumers and businesses a more holistic identity verification and fraud prevention product that protects a transaction from start to finish. The new solution will offer banks and other organizations with a single authentication tool that offers a simple approach to fighting fraud throughout each step of a transaction.

“With additional resources now available to the ID R&D team, we expect to bring exciting breakthroughs to the market at an even faster pace,” said ID R&D President Alexey Khitrov in a blog post. “Mitek’s financial strength, global reach, and scale will only enhance our ability to expand our core biometric product portfolio.”

ID R&D was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in New York City. The company has raised a total of $5.7 million across two rounds of funding, the most recent investment taking place in May of 2019.

Founded in 1986, Mitek went public in 2011 and now trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker MITK. The company has a market capitalization of $739 million.

The increase in consumers going digital has been beneficial to Mitek. Last year, Mitek saw a year-over-year growth increase of 20%. This growth is likely to increase. In fact, Juniper Research estimates that by 2025, 1.4 billion consumers will be using facial recognition to facilitate secure transactions.

On Earth Day (and Every Day) Paperless is the Way to Be

On Earth Day (and Every Day) Paperless is the Way to Be

Today is Earth Day, and what better way to celebrate than to take a look at fintechs helping out the environment by promoting eco-friendly habits. Here we feature companies with technology that saves trees by reducing the amount of paper used in the industry.

We’ve rounded up a handful of environmentally friendly fintechs in three categories: digital invoicing, paper-free mortgages, digital receipt printing, and paperless onboarding.

Digital invoicing

By taking the invoicing process digital, small businesses not only save paper, they can also save time and potentially receive payment faster, freeing up working capital they can put back into their operations.

  • Paper.id provides SMEs with invoicing tools and payment integration. The company offers tools to help businesses issue their invoices digitally and receive payment via electronic payment methods. Paper.id demoed at FinovateFall 2018
  • Charlie-India’s Invoicing Hub is a white label e-invoicing platform for banks and service providers. The tools allow SME bank clients to send, view, process, and pay their invoices within the bank’s online interface. Charlie-India demoed at FinovateEurope 2018.
  • Tradeshift offers an e-invoicing service that connects companies with suppliers, customers and partners. Among the applications available on the platform are e-invoicing, electronic purchase orders, and automated document validation. Tradeshift demoed at FinovateEurope 2012.

Paper-free mortgages

Mortgage technology is one of the last frontiers in fintech. Regulation and oversight have made the home-buying process somewhat resistant to disruption. In the past few years, however, we’ve seen a handful of startups working to digitize the mortgage process, removing the need for hundreds of sheets of paper required to close a home loan.

  • Namaste Credit is an India-based startup that serves as an online marketplace for mortgage loans. The service connects borrowers with relevant lenders to help them find the loan that best suits their circumstance. Namaste Credit demoed at FinovateFall 2018.
  • Tavant Technologies offers VELOX, a suite of digital products ranging from searching for a home to closing on the loan. VELOX completely automates the process, making compliance more efficient and reducing the need for paper. Tavant Technologies demoed at FinovateSpring 2017.
  • Roostify seeks to give consumers a better way to find and purchase a home. The company’s digital platform offers everything from digital customer onboarding to transparent, digital fulfillment to help lenders offer their clients a more efficient mortgage borrowing experience. Roostify demoed at FinovateSpring 2018.h

Digital receipt printing

Many retailers ask customers if they want to keep their receipt, but even if the answer is “no” the cashier still prints the receipt and throws it in the trash behind the counter. Digital receipt printing eliminates both the paper– and the awkward line of questioning– all together by sending the customer an email receipt.

  • Dream Payments’ cloud-based platform offers a mobile POS device that not only accepts debit and credit cards, but also provides analytics, reports, and gives customers digital receipts. Dream Payments demoed at FinovateSpring 2015.
  • CardFlight offers an API that allows merchants to accept online and offline payments within their own app. The company’s encrypted mobile magstripe reader, combined with its API, offer flexibility while keeping payments– and receipts– digital. CardFlight demoed at FinovateSpring 2013.
  • ShopKeep’s POS technology takes a merchant’s cash register to an iPad. The register accepts a range of payments, from magstripe, to EMV, to Apple Pay; plus provides inventory management tools and purchase reporting analytics. The company’s mobile checkout flow also offers a paper-free, email receipt option. ShopKeep demoed at FinovateFall 2012.

Paperless onboarding

Considered a must for millennials, paperless onboarding not only speeds up the application process, it also reduces errors, eases compliance, and eliminates the need for in-person bank visits.

  • Five Degrees specializes in core banking technology. The company’s Matrix offering helps banks provide SMEs a fully automated, paperless loan onboarding experience. The paperless process lowers cost for both parties while expediting funds. Five Degrees demoed at FinovateAsia 2017.
  • Quadient, formerly GMC Software, helps organizations create a better customer experience. The company’s Mobile Advantage solution is an omni-channel tool that offers digital statements and billing, paperless onboarding, and client e-signature. In addition to improving the customer experience, this combination speeds up workflows and reduces error. Quadient demoed at FinovateFall 2017.
  • Mitek combines digital onboarding with identity verification tools. The company helps banks authenticate an applicant’s ID document and combines this with additional identifying paperwork. The supplemental documents not only verify the customer’s identity, but also provide additional information that can be used in loan underwriting to create a more complete picture of the applicant’s financial state. Mitek demoed at FinovateFall 2017.


Yes, Banks Can Compete with Apple’s New Credit Card

Yes, Banks Can Compete with Apple’s New Credit Card

What’s in your wallet? Or rather, what’s in banks’ clients’ wallets? Some sexy competition appeared on the market yesterday, as Apple announced the pending launch of its own credit card in collaboration with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard.

The card is touted more for its mobile and digital qualities than its shiny titanium finish. Despite the shine, however, many of the card’s features and offerings aren’t new. And that’s good news for banks. While traditional financial institutions aren’t as sexy as tech companies such as Apple, they are generally viewed as more trustworthy. And with that kind of foundation, all banks need to do is piece together the features into their own credit card offering and market it properly.

Fortunately, there are plenty of fintech firms out there to help. Here are some of the features Apple is promoting and a list of corresponding fintechs that can help banks take the same approach.

Physical card security

Apple boasts a titanium card with the customer’s name etched on the front– no credit card number, no cvv code, no expiration date. All of that information is tucked away inside the app. Physical card innovator Dynamics takes a similar (though admittedly less visually appealing) approach. The Pennsylvania-based company offers a computer-in-a-card that hides part of the card number, the cvv code, and expiration date on the physical card until the consumer enters their PIN into the card. As an added bonus, Dynamics also offers in-card loyalty and rewards features, as well as a card that hosts multiple numbers, allowing customers to toggle between debit and credit cards.

Chat functionality

As a company that is known for simplifying technology, Apple is taking a similar approach with its customer service. “Have a question? Just text,” is the message the company features on its card website. Fortunately, there are plenty of fintechs that help banks simplify their customer experience. Two such companies are Finn.ai and Clinc, both of which leverage AI to save banks money on customer service representatives, while simplifying and expediting access to answers via a chat interface.

PFM

One way to win over customers is to convince them you’ll help them organize their finances and ultimately save them money. That’s why Apple is offering in-app PFM capabilities. And while the technology hasn’t changed much since it debuted before the fintech craze, the colorful user interface is beautiful enough to convince anyone to want to look at their spending behavior.

Banks have seemingly endless options to compete with this feature. And while most financial institutions currently offer some sort of PFM capabilities, it’s worth looking at it from a superficial point of view. Utah-based MX and Sweden-based Tink both offer visually-pleasing interfaces that are arguably more beautiful than Apple’s and are backed by powerful PFM engines.

Mobile app security

Apple’s iPhone holds the hardware for both fingerprint and facial recognition technology, and since the company is reinforcing its focus on security, it is leveraging biometrics for account access. With the right software, banks can leverage fingerprint and facial recognition technology as well. Jumio, IDology, and Mitek all offer technology banks can implement for fast account access, as well as account onboarding.

Fast onboarding

With access to consumer data, Apple has an advantage of being able to quickly onboard new consumers using existing consumer information. There are multiple fintechs that help banks onboard consumers quickly, as well, including Digital Onboarding, Q2’s Gro Solutions, and Fenergo. Digital Onboarding motivates customers to open new accounts using incentives and gamification. Gro Solutions touts the ability for customers to open and fund accounts in under four minutes. And Fenergo takes a holistic approach to onboarding, providing banks a lifetime view of the client to help perform data refreshes, ongoing due diligence, and upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Rewards

Credit card rewards programs may seem like a feature of the past, but rewards are certainly still relevant. With its new card’s rewards program, Apple once again seeks to simplify things by offering consumers daily rewards. Two fintechs, Cardlytics and Cartera Commerce, offer tried and true loyalty and rewards programs. These offerings not only boost consumer loyalty, they also offer banks further insight and analysis into consumer spending.

Apple’s new credit card is shipping this summer. Fortunately for banks, fintechs are here to help them compete.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Fiserv Helps NationalLink Maximize Smart Safe Technology.
  • Mastercard to Acquire Digital Commerce Fraud Fighter Ethoca.

Around the web

  • Carsharing firm HyreCar leverages identity verification technology from Mitek for its mobile onboarding app.
  • PayPal invests $750 million in Argentina’s e-commerce company, MercadoLibre.
  • Tinkoff Bank reports 2018 highlights including launch of new mortgage app, a joint P2P money transfer offering with Sberbank, and more than 2.7 million new active credit customers.
  • Best of Show winner Voleo chosen to participate in Netherlands-based fintech research program.
  • ThreatMetrix teams up with Blue Turtle Technologies to help market its fraud prevention solution to customers in Africa.
  • ArthaYantra wins Fintech of the Year (India) at The Asset Triple A Digital Awards.
  • Stash launches Stock-Back, a rewards program to bridge banking and investing.
  • Jack Henry to collaborate with the Zelle Network to launch JHA PayCenter.
  • InComm expands into lottery industry with Linq3 Technologies acquisition.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

How to Compete in the Fast-Growing Digital Lending Market

How to Compete in the Fast-Growing Digital Lending Market


The digital lending market is rapidly expanding, growing at an impressive 47% CAGR, spurred by venture capital (VC) investment, according to the new whitepaper, European Digital Lenders: How operating efficiency is helping digital lenders attack a $150 billion annual origination market across the Eurozone in 2018, from analysts at the Fintech research practice, Autonomous Next. The UK alone has an origination market of $6.6B, while across Europe, the addressable market is $150B and revenues are estimated at $400m. This represents a sizable opportunity for a competitive market that includes new entrants and incumbents alike.

Lenders who want to remain competitive need to drive efficiency through digitisation

But while the market is growing quickly, the whitepaper reports that digital lending’s share of the total addressable origination market is still relatively low – especially given the size of the opportunity.

This discrepancy is attributed to the competitive nature of this new, but rapidly expanding, market. To remain competitive and profitable, lenders need to drive efficiency through digitisation. Efficient onboarding and servicing using digitised workflows, such as digital identity verification technology, are being used by both new entrants and incumbents to boost competitiveness by ensuring regulatory compliance, improving speed, and reducing the cost of customer acquisition. In fact, the report finds that digital identity verification can reduce KYC/AML costs by up to 70%, and improve speed by 80%.

Aplazame, an instant consumer financing company based in Spain, illustrates an ideal example of increase in customer acquisition by way of digitisation in their case study. Spain sees massive online shopping cart abandonment, with over 69% of carts abandoned, representing a missed total of approximately 46 billion euros. In order to capture these lost opportunities, Aplazame needed to correctly, securely and quickly verify the identity of customers who applied for credit. After adopting a secure, easy-to-use identity verification solution, they were able to verify a customer’s identity in less than 20 seconds, allowing them to offer instant, secure and streamlined financing – and ultimately achieving a 20% increase in conversions.

Improving customer acquisition and reducing KYC/AML costs

The report also highlights the speed of onboarding as another competitive factor as processing times have been drastically reduced in the digital world – from a traditional six weeks to a matter of minutes. However, while digital lenders have increased the speed of onboarding, their costs of acquiring customers hasn’t budged. On average, acquisition costs remain at $300 per customer, which includes as much as $150 to run KYC and AML checks.   Another stumbling block many digital lenders face is the high cost of their capital is preventing digital lenders from competing with incumbent banks on price – and this cost isn’t likely to drop anytime soon, so a savvy digital lender has to figure out how to be as efficient as possible.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Smart digital lenders are starting to harness their lower operating costs to their advantage. For digital lenders, reducing costs is paramount to offering a real alternative to traditional banking providers. Where digital lenders must also play catch up is with security – and digital identity verification has the potential to be the tool to make this happen.

For digital lenders, mandatory KYC and AML checks are still largely manual, building delays and inefficiencies into the onboarding and vetting process. Combine these delays with high costs per customer, and the clunky process can prevent digital lenders from competing with incumbent banks on price. To gain an edge on their competition, digital lenders are investing in identity verification solutions, which provide an opportunity to massively enhance the efficiency of the onboarding process in terms of both speed and cost reduction. Diminishing inefficiencies and offering better prices can help drive a more ideal customer experience and help to garner some market share away from traditional lenders.

Digitisation can benefit industries beyond lending

Businesses from other industries, from online marketplaces and sharing economy platforms, to innovative financial institutions like challenger banks and money transfer services, are following suit as they realize that the right identity verification solutions can help them achieve compliance, reduce fraud, onboard more customers quickly, create trust and safety, and promote brand integrity.

For example, global money transfer company MoneyGram deployed Mitek’s Mobile Verify® to aid their organization in reducing friction, speeding up the verification process to service more customers faster, and to fulfill regulatory requirements. As a result, MoneyGram saw a 20% reduction in fraud loss and, more specifically, an 80% reduction in account takeover fraud – as well as a more than 70% increase in ID acceptance rates.

In addition to reducing fraud and creating a safer platform, proper identity verification tools can help many types of businesses more quickly build their customer base. When blockchain payment pioneer Nocks began using digital identity verification, they achieved an onboarding speed of 5 minutes and drastically reduce its abandonment rate, enabling them to grow their customer base by 214% in just six months.

In this new economy, businesses need to prioritize their digital processes to respond to consumers and regulations. Digital identity and onboarding, in particular presents lenders and savvy financial institutions the chance to improve customer acquisition funnels, improve margins, mitigate fraud risk, and meet regulatory requirements while delivering a fast and secure digital user experience. In the end, those businesses that seize on the opportunity that digitization offers will be the ones who hold the key to success in the age of digital only lending and finance.

Download the Autonomous Report and find out more about how to drive success with digital identity.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Finovate Alums Shine in 2019 Forbes Fintech 50 Roster.

Around the web

  • Mirror Review features Neener Analytics founder and CEO, Jeff LoCastro on small data and social media analytics.
  • Connecticut’s Guilford Savings Bank to deploy technology from Jack Henry & Associates.
  • BioMetric Signature ID to integrate identity verification technology from Mitek to provide authentication for its BioProof-ID solution.
  • Business Intelligence Group honors Jumio as part of its 2019 BIG Innovation Awards.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • CardFlight Aligns with Payscape to Expand Merchant Base.

Around the web

  • PaySimple announces latest payment integration with MarketSharp’s CRM software.
  • Equifax selects Experian to provide customers free credit monitoring through its TrustedID Premier service.
  • QuotePro and Fiserv partner to speed credit for cash payments at self-service kiosks.
  • Singapore-based WeInvest expands to UAE.
  • PYMNTS: OnDeck loan origination volume increased double digits YoY and sequentially, the volume up 22% from the 2017 third quarter
  • Mitek appoints Max Carnecchia as CEO.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

Around the web

  • Reuters: Mitek rejects takeover offer from hedge fund Elliott Management Corp’s software company ASG Technologies.
  • NetGuardians makes the Chartis Risktech Quadrant for enterprise fraud technology 2018.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.