MITEK SYSTEMS INC

Overview

Mitek Systems, Inc. (“Mitek,” the “Company,” “we,” “us,” and “our”) is a leading innovator of mobile image capture and digital identity verification solutions. We are a software development company with expertise in computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning. We currently serve more than 7,900 financial services organizations and leading marketplace and financial technology (“fintech”) brands around the globe. Customers count on Mitek to deliver trusted and convenient online experiences, detect and reduce fraud, and meet Know Your Customer (“KYC”) and Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) regulatory compliance. The Company’s solutions are embedded in native mobile apps and web browsers to facilitate digital consumer experiences. Mitek’s identity verification and authentication technologies and services make it possible for banks, financial services organizations and the world’s leading marketplace and sharing platforms to verify an individual’s identity during numerous stages of the customer lifecycle, allowing them to reduce risk and meet regulatory requirements. The Company’s advanced mobile deposit system enables secure, fast and convenient deposit services. Thousands of organizations use Mitek solutions to optimize the security of mobile check deposits, new account openings and more.

In May of 2021, Mitek acquired ID R&D, Inc. (“ID R&D” and such acquisition, the “ID R&D Acquisition”), an award-winning provider of AI-based voice and face biometrics and liveness detection. ID R&D delivers innovative, biometric capabilities that raise the bar on usability and performance. The ID R&D Acquisition helps simplify and secure the entire transaction lifecycle for both businesses and consumers, provides businesses and financial institutions with access to one authentication solution to deploy throughout the entire transaction cycle, and can provide consumers with a simple, intuitive approach to fighting fraud.

In March of 2022, Mitek acquired HooYu Ltd. (“HooYu”), a leading KYC technology provider in the United Kingdom. Such technology helps to ensure businesses know the true identity of their customers by linking biometric verification with real-time data aggregation across many different sources, including credit bureaus, international sanctions lists, local law-enforcement, and others.

Mitek markets and sells its products and services worldwide through internal, direct sales teams located in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America as well as through channel partners. Our partner sales strategy includes channel partners who are financial services technology providers and identity verification providers. These partners integrate our products into their solutions to meet the needs of their customers, typically provisioning Mitek services through their respective platforms.

Product and Technology Overview

Technology

During the twelve months ended September 30, 2023, we had one operating segment: the development, sale, and service of our proprietary software solutions related to mobile image capture and identity verification.

Our digital technology solutions are provided in two parts: (i) a software development kit for mobile image capture and (ii) a cloud software platform which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to classify and extract data to enable mobile check deposit as well as aid the authentication of identity documents including passports, identity cards, and driver's licenses using a camera-equipped device.

Our technology uses patented algorithms that analyze images of identity documents in many ways. These include image quality analysis, image repair and optimization, document identification and classification, data extraction, and numerous authenticators.

Products

Mobile Deposit®

Mitek’s Mobile Deposit® solution is used today by millions of consumers in the United States and Canada for mobile check deposit. Mobile Deposit® enables individuals and businesses to remotely deposit checks using their camera-equipped smartphone or tablet. Mobile Deposit® is embedded within the financial institutions’ digital banking apps used by consumers and now processes more than one billion check deposits annually. Mitek began selling Mobile Deposit® in early 2008 and received its first patent for this product in August 2010.

Mobile Deposit® allows consumers to take photographs of the front and back of a check and then remotely deposit the check all within their financial institution’s mobile banking app. Mitek delivers a simple and easy user experience with our proprietary mobile automatic capture which assists users in capturing a high quality image of a check by holding their mobile device over the check.

Mobile Verify®

Mobile Verify® is an identity verification solution that can be integrated into mobile apps, mobile websites, and desktop applications. Mobile Verify® combines an optimal image capture experience with our leading document authentication technology — helping our customers validate an identity document presented in a digital transaction is genuine and unaltered. Adding a second layer for identity proofing, Mobile Verify® matches the portrait extracted from the identity document with a selfie of its presenter by doing a biometric face comparison.

The Mobile Verify® identity verification engine is a modular cross-platform architecture that uses machine learning and advanced computer vision algorithms. To achieve the highest accuracy rates, Mitek’s technology was conceptualized to verify the authenticity of an identity document in the following systematic approach:

•Guided document capture, enabling users to take a quality photo for optimal processing;

•Document classification computer vision algorithms that recognize and classify thousands of diverse identity documents from around the world allowing for reliable data extraction;

•Data extraction that goes beyond traditional Optimal Character Recognition (“OCR”) to deconstruct the document and analyze the content of each field; and

•Evaluation of authenticity elements, using a combination of machine learning techniques and unique computer vision algorithms to help determine the authenticity of a document by evaluating several elements within the document.

Mobile Fill®

Mobile Fill®, which includes automatic image capture, minimizes the number of clicks and expedites form fill completion. In mere seconds, and just by taking a photo of an identity document, people can easily complete application forms and quickly become approved customers. Organizations can use Mobile Fill® for a variety of purposes, including streamlining the process of opening a checking, savings, or credit card account, paying a bill, activating an offer, and more. Mobile Fill® is available for native apps and web browser applications.

MiSnap™

Mitek MiSnap™ is a patented mobile-capture software development kit (“SDK”) that enables an intuitive user experience and instant capture of quality images of identity documents and checks. The key to successful mobile check deposit, data pre-fill and ID document verification is the quality of the image capture. Mitek's MiSnap™ helps enable every user to capture a quality image the first time.

CheckReader™

CheckReader™ enables financial institutions to automatically extract data from checks once they have been scanned or photographed by the application. Easily integrated into mobile and server-based applications providing automatic image pre-processing and recognition capabilities, CheckReader™ allows for the automatic recognition of all fields on checks and generic payments documents, whether handwritten or machine printed. CheckReader™ is utilized as a core component throughout a wide range of check processing applications, including ATMs, centralized and back office processes, remittance, merchants, and fraud applications. CheckReader™ is deployed worldwide in over forty countries.

Check Fraud Defender

The premier AI-powered and cloud-hosted model for fighting check fraud, Check Fraud Defender uses Mitek’s proprietary check image science to spot visual anomalies in checks submitted by participating banks to better isolate suspected fraud and reduce bank and consumer losses. Check Fraud Defender helps banks fight check fraud by analyzing more than 18 visual elements of a check to give a more comprehensive view of possible fraud.

Check Intelligence

Check Intelligence enables financial institutions to automatically extract data from a check image received across any deposit channel—branch, ATM, remote deposit capture, and mobile. Through the automatic recognition of all fields on checks, whether handwritten or machine printed, Check Intelligence speeds up the time to deposit for banks and customers and helps enable financial institutions to comply with check clearing regulations. With built-in image quality analysis and image usability analysis, Check Intelligence also ensures that the check meets the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act requirements and other industry and regulatory standards.

Mitek Verified Identity Platform (“MiVIP®”)

MiVIP® is an end-to-end KYC platform that helps companies to quickly design, build, and deploy robust KYC journeys with little or no development resources. We combine facial biometrics, liveness detection, ID document validation, database checks, geolocation, digital footprint analysis, and more to provide the clearest picture of who is requesting access to a business’ services. The platform provides robust identity verification through comprehensive document verification, biometric comparison, and liveness detection. The platform also simplifies the end user experience with omni-channel journey support in which users can easily switch between a mobile and desktop experience without losing their journey progress, or pause and pick up their journey at a later time via a different device.

MiPass®

MiPass®, with its state-of-the-art facial and voice biometric capabilities, provides increased protection against today’s most sophisticated forms of identity theft and increasingly dangerous fraud techniques, such as deepfakes and synthetic identities. These technologies ensure the highest level of security against evolving threats while delivering a superior consumer experience.

As more interactions move online, passwords are a challenging and a highly imperfect solution for granting account access to customers. Asking trusted customers to re-assert their identity at every touchpoint only leads to frustration and abandonment and passwords leave customers vulnerable to identity theft and account takeover attacks. The availability, simplicity, and convenience of biometrics on consumer devices has opened the door for organizations in all industries to transform the trusted customer experience. MiPass® strengthens a business’s trust in a consumer’s real-world identity using a sophisticated combination of biometrics that are extremely difficult to falsify – face, liveness detection, and voice allowing organizations to replace passwords and one-time passcodes with biometric authentication that can be easily embedded into existing platforms and customer experiences.

ID_CLOUD™

ID_CLOUD™ is a fully automated identity verification solution that can be integrated into a customer’s application to instantly read and validate identity documents. ID_CLOUD™ automated technology enables global enterprises to improve their customer acquisition technology while meeting AML requirements in a safe and cost-effective manner. This solution is available in the cloud, via mobile websites, and desktop applications. Additionally, a version of ID_CLOUD™ is available that works locally on a desktop which is connected to a propriety hardware scanner for reading and validating identity documents.

IDLive® Face

IDLive® Face is the industry’s first passive facial liveness detection product. The technology is critical to frictionless fraud prevention in solutions that use face biometrics for authentication and digital identity proofing. IDLive® Face is iBeta Levels 1 and 2 Presentation Attack Detection (“PAD”) compliant and is used to process millions of monthly transactions for customers worldwide.

IDVoice®

IDVoice® is a robust AI-driven voice biometric engine that enables fast, convenient authentication on mobile, web, and telephone channels. The product is also optimized to enable embedded security and personalization on Internet of Things devices. IDVoice® has achieved top rankings in the industry’s leading benchmark challenges.

IDLive® Voice

IDLive® Voice helps stop spoofing attacks on voice biometric systems by distinguishing live voice from synthesized speech, voice deepfakes, and recordings.

IDLive Doc™

IDLive Doc™ works to fight fraud related to digitally displayed document images. This AI-based product validates the physical presence of documents used when verifying customer identities online. The product can be added to any onboarding or electronic KYC solution, providing another layer of fraud prevention for banks, gig economy companies, telecom companies, and others.

Sales and Marketing

We derive revenue predominately from the sale of licenses (to both our on premise and transactional software as a service (“SaaS”) products) and transaction fees to use our products, and to a lesser extent by providing maintenance and professional services for the products we offer. The revenue we derive from the sale of such licenses is derived from both the sale to our channel partners of licenses to sell the applications we offer as well as the direct sale of licenses and services to customers.

We have an internal marketing group that develops corporate and digital marketing strategies. The internal team executes these strategies with the help of external resources as needed to support both direct sales and channel partners’ sales efforts.

Intellectual Property

Our success depends in large part upon our proprietary technology. We attempt to protect our intellectual property rights primarily through a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, employee and third-party non-disclosure agreements, and other measures. We believe that factors such as the technological and creative skills of our personnel, new product development, frequent product enhancements, name recognition, and reliable product maintenance are essential to establishing and maintaining a technological leadership position. There can be no assurance that our means of protecting our proprietary rights in the U.S. or abroad will be adequate. We seek to protect our software, documentation, and other written materials under trade secret and copyright laws, which afford only limited protection. Further, there can be no assurance that our patents will offer any protection or that they will not be challenged, invalidated, or circumvented. If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, or we infringe on the intellectual property rights of a third-party, our operating results could be adversely affected.

As of September 30, 2023, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued us 100 patents with expiration dates ranging from 2026 through 2037 and we have filed for 20 additional domestic and international patents. In addition, we generally enter into confidentiality agreements with certain employees.

Market Opportunities, Challenges & Risks

We believe that financial institutions, fintechs, and other companies see our patented solutions as a way to provide a superior digital customer experience to meet growing consumer demands of trust and convenience online and, at the same time, assist them in meeting regulatory requirements. The value of digital transformation to our customers is a possible increase in top line revenue and a reduction in the cost of sales and service. As the use of new technology increases, so does associated fraud and cyber-attacks. The negative outcomes of fraud and cyber-attacks encompass financial losses, brand damage, and loss of loyal customers. We predict growth in our deposits business as a result of the increased consumer adoption of digital financial services provided to them by their banks and identity verification products based on current trends in payments, online lending, more stringent regulations, growing usage of sharing apps and online marketplaces, and the ever-increasing demand for digital services.

Factors adversely affecting the pricing of, or demand for, our digital solutions, such as competition from other products or technologies, any decline in the demand for digital transactions, or negative publicity or obsolescence of the software environments in which our products operate, could result in lower revenues or gross margins. Further, because substantially all of our revenues are from a few types of technology, our product concentration may make us especially vulnerable to market demand and competition from other technologies, which could reduce our revenues.

The sales cycle for our software and services can be lengthy and the implementation cycles for our software and services by our channel partners and customers can also be lengthy, often as long as six months and sometimes longer for larger customers. If implementation of our products by our channel partners and customers is delayed or otherwise not completed, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be adversely affected.

Revenues related to most of our on premise licenses for mobile products are required to be recognized up front upon satisfaction of all applicable revenue recognition criteria. Revenue related to our SaaS products is recognized ratably over the life of the contract or as transactions are used depending on the contract criteria. The recognition of future revenues from these licenses is dependent upon a number of factors, including, but not limited to, the term of our license agreements, the timing of implementation of our products by our channel partners and customers, and the timing of any re-orders of additional licenses and/or license renewals by our channel partners and customers.

During each of the last few years, sales of licenses to one or more channel partners have comprised a significant portion of our revenue each year. This is attributable to the timing of renewals or purchases of licenses and does not represent a dependence on any single channel partner. If we were to lose a channel partner relationship, we do not believe such a loss would adversely affect our operations because either we or another channel partner could sell our products to the end-users that had purchased products from the channel partner we lost. However, in that case, we or another channel partner must establish a relationship with the end-users, which could take time to develop.

We have a growing number of competitors in the mobile image capture and identity verification industry, many of which have greater financial, technical, marketing, and other resources. However, we believe our patented mobile image capture and identity verification technology, our growing portfolio of products and coverage for the financial services industry and our market expertise gives us a distinct competitive advantage. To remain competitive, we will continue to offer products that are attractive to the consumer as well as being compliant, accurate, and convenient. To help us remain competitive, we intend to further our investment in research and development as well as partnering with other technology providers.

Competition

The market for our products and solutions is intensely competitive, subject to rapid change, and significantly affected by the introduction of new products or technologies and other market activities of industry participants. We face direct and indirect competition from a broad range of competitors who offer a variety of products and solutions to our current and potential customers. Our principal competition comes from: (i) customer-developed solutions; (ii) companies offering alternative methods of identity verification; (iii) companies offering competing technologies capable of mobile remote deposit capture or authenticating identity documents and facial photo comparison; and (iv) alternate forms of user authentication, including face and voice recognition.

It is also possible that we will face competition from new industry participants or alternative technologies. Moreover, as the market for automated document processing, image recognition and authentication, check imaging, and fraud detection software develops, a number of companies with significantly greater resources than we have could attempt to enter or increase their presence in our industry, either independently or by acquiring or forming strategic alliances with our competitors, or otherwise increase their focus on the industry. In addition, current and potential competitors have established or may establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties to increase the ability of their products to address the needs of our current and potential customers.

Our products are compliant with Service-Oriented Architecture standards and compete, to various degrees, with products produced by a number of substantial competitors. Competition among product providers in this market generally focuses on price, accuracy, reliability, global coverage, and technical support. We believe our primary competitive advantages in this market are: (i) our mobile auto image capture user experience used by millions of consumers; (ii) our patented data science; (iii) scalability; and (iv) an architectural software design that allows our products to be more readily modified, improved with added functionality, and configured for new products, thereby allowing our software to be easily upgraded.

Increased competition may result in price reductions, reduced gross margins, and loss of market share, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Research and Development

We develop software products internally and also purchase or license rights to third-party intellectual property. We believe that our future success depends in part on our ability to maintain and improve our core technologies, enhance our existing products, and develop new products that meet an expanding range of customer requirements.

Internal research and development allows us to maintain closer technical control over our products and gives us the ability to determine which modifications and enhancements are most important and when they should be implemented to ensure the proper functioning and improved performance of our products. We intend to expand our existing product offerings and introduce new mobile image capture and digital identity verification capabilities that meet a broader set of needs of our customers. We intend to continue to support the major industry standard operating environments.

Our research and development organization includes software engineers and scientists, many of whom have advanced degrees, as well as additional personnel in quality assurance and related disciplines. All our scientists and software engineers are involved in product development.

The development team includes specialists in artificial intelligence, computer vision, software engineering, user interface design, product documentation, product management, and quality assurance. The team is responsible for maintaining and enhancing the performance, quality, and utility of all of our products. In addition to research and development, our engineering staff provides customer technical support on an as-needed basis.

Human Capital Resources

As of September 30, 2023, we had 590 employees, 160 in the U.S. and 430 internationally, 573 of which are full time. Our total employee base consists of 329 sales and marketing, professional services, and document review employees, 189 research and development and support employees, and 72 employees in executive, finance, network administration, and other capacities. In addition, we engaged various consultants in the areas of research and development, product development, finance, and marketing during fiscal year 2023. We have never had a work stoppage and none of our employees are represented by a labor organization. Substantially all of our employees, other than a certain number of our executive officers and employees with customary employment arrangements within Europe, are at will employees, which means that each employee can terminate his or her relationship with us and we can terminate our relationship with him or her at any time. We offer industry competitive wages and benefits and are committed to maintaining a workplace environment that promotes employee productivity and satisfaction. We consider our relations with our employees to be good. We are also focused on understanding our diversity and inclusion strengths and opportunities and executing on a strategy to support further progress. We continue to focus on building a pipeline for talent to create more opportunities for workplace diversity and to support greater representation within the Company.

Available Information

We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act. Consequently, we are required to file reports and information with the SEC, including reports on the following forms: annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act. These reports and other information concerning us may be accessed, free of charge, through the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and our website at www.miteksystems.com. These reports are placed on our website as soon as reasonably practicable after they are filed with the SEC. Information contained in, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into, nor is it in any way a part of, this Form 10-K.