Systems and methods are provided for processing an image of a financial payment document captured using a mobile device and classifying the type of payment document in order to extract the content therein. These methods may be implemented on a mobile device or a central server, and can be used to identify content on the payment document and determine whether the payment document is ready to be processed by a business or financial institution. The system can identify the type of payment document by identifying features on the payment document and performing a series of steps to determine probabilities that the payment document belongs to a specific document type. The identification steps are arranged starting with the fastest step in order to attempt to quickly determine the payment document type without requiring lengthy, extensive analysis.