What you should know about mobile photo payment

Pay bills in just one click within your banking app

More than half of all Germans were already using online banking to carry out banking transactions in 2021. An important part of this is the photo payment function.

What is a photo payment?

As the name suggests, a photo of the invoice is uploaded to the mobile banking app and the smartphone automatically transfers the payment-relevant data to the transfer form. This avoids the error-prone typing of invoice information into the transfer form and saves valuable time.

In this article, we explain exactly how photo payment works and the advantages of photo payment.

Photo payment for your banking app
Do it like our customer Star Finanz GmbH and integrate high-quality, secure photo payment into your banking apps with the Docutain Photo Payment SDK. Learn more about the Docutain SDK and contact us at any time by e-mail: SDK@Docutain.com.

How does photo payment work?

Most major banking apps, such as Sparkasse, Volksbank, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DKB, Sparda Bank, Comdirect or ING-DiBa, would be unthinkable without the photo payment function. Multibanking apps, which offer the option of displaying several accounts from different banks in one app, also offer the function of paying bills digitally. These include Outbank, Finanzblick, N26 and StarMoney, for example.

The functionality of the photo payment via app is almost always similar and takes place in three simple steps:

1. The banking app asks for access to your camera the first time you use it. This access must be granted so that the photo payment can be used. Once access has been granted, you can scan or import your invoice.
2. With the help of intelligent OCR text recognition, the app recognizes all payment-relevant data (IBAN, amount, purpose, recipient) in just a few seconds and can transfer the data to the form.
3. After a successful check, you can approve the order and pay with your smartphone.

This enables you to pay bills by photo payment. Mobile bill pay solutions can be that easy.

Advantages of photo payment

Photo bill pay or picture pay saves you as a banking app user from having to manually type in payment data and is extremely reliable. Typing errors are a thing of the past, as the payment-relevant data is automatically recognized thanks to OCR. This is a crucial aspect, especially for the 22-digit IBAN, as it is more prone to typing errors. Another advantage is the fact that many mobile banking apps offer this function, which means you can often use the digital method.

Photo payments also have a number of advantages for banks themselves. The automated process increases customer satisfaction and the app is used more frequently with a positive user experience, which in turn leads to increased user retention. In the long term, increased usage leads to a more positive brand perception and, if customers are satisfied, to positive reviews.

Fast, precise and secure payment with the Docutain SDK

The innovative Docutain Photo Payment SDK can be integrated for the successful execution of photo payments. It enables invoices to be scanned and invoice information to be recognized automatically.

Docutain impresses with precise data recognition and simple user guidance. The underlying artificial intelligence was developed by INFOSOFT itself and has been successfully used and further developed in the Docutain app for years.

Another decisive advantage of using the Docutain Photo Payment SDK is the security aspect:
The Docutain Photo Payment SDK runs 100% offline, locally on the device. In concrete terms, this means that the recognized information is not uploaded to a server or passed on to third parties, but that the data recognition takes place locally on the device. This means that no order data processing contract (DPA) is required and you as the end customer do not have to ask yourself on which servers the data read from your bill is stored. The local nature of the process also ensures a level of reliability that cannot be guaranteed with server-based providers. These are important aspects that clearly distinguish the Docutain SDK from other providers of this functionality.

Read the success story of our customer Star Finanz GmbH

Advantages of the Docutain SDK for mobile banking app providers at a glance

What are you waiting for?
You too can offer your mobile banking customers a smooth process for photo payments in your banking app. Contact us now and learn more.