Financial institution BBVA Compass is jumping on the picture bill payment bandwagon, announcing it has added the feature to its iPhone app. With picture bill pay, bank customers can pay bills and add payees by simply taking pictures of their paper bills with their iPhones.

"We wanted our app to be as robust as possible since nearly 35 percent of those who take advantage of mobile banking manage their finances exclusively through their apps," said Alejandro Carriles, director of self-service channels at BBVA Compass. "Innovative and fun features like this allow us to improve and simplify those customers' experiences."

The new picture bill payment capabilities, which use information gleaned from the picture to prepopulate information into the mobile banking app, eliminate the need for consumers to manually enter data when setting up mobile bill payment.

BBVA Compass is using the Mobile Photo Bill Pay from provider Mitek Systems.

An Android version of picture bill payment should be released later this summer.

BBVA Compass is a subsidiary of BBVA Compass Bancshares Inc., itself a wholly owned subsidiary of BBVA.

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