Ed West is chief executive of Mitek, the San Diego, California, company whose software verifies identities and lets customers deposit cheques by photographing them, a service used by most US banks. A finance executive who has run an airline's books, a for-profit college group and the world's largest ATM operator, he took over Mitek in October 2024.
Airline Finance at Delta
Early in his career he was executive vice president and chief financial officer of Delta Air Lines.
Running Education Management
He joined Education Management Corp, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, operator of for-profit colleges, in 2006 and was its president and chief executive from 2012 through 2015, a period when the sector came under heavy regulatory and legal pressure. In 2012 Institutional Investor chose him as one of its CFOs of the Year.
Turning Cardtronics Into a Payments Company
In 2016 he became chief financial officer of Cardtronics, the operator of cash machines in shops and petrol stations around the world, and from 2018 to 2021 he was its president and chief executive. He led the move from a hardware business toward a broader financial services provider before NCR bought the company in 2021.
Joining Mitek
Mitek appointed him chief executive and a board member on 1 October 2024, after a period under interim chief executive Scott Carter, who became non-executive chairman. "Mitek has an exciting opportunity to continue reshaping the future of identity and fraud management," West said. Its mobile deposit technology is used by most US banks, and its identity products check documents and faces for banks and other firms. In fiscal 2025, his first full year, Mitek's revenue reached a record $179.7 million, with software-as-a-service revenue up 21% and net income of $8.8 million.
He spent years running a company built on machines that hand out cash. He now runs one built for a world that uses less of it, where a cheque arrives as a photo and a customer proves who they are with a selfie.
