The technology of the present disclosure includes computer-implemented methods, computer program products, and systems to filter images before transmitting to a system for optical character recognition (“OCR”). A user computing device obtains a first image of the card from the digital scan of a physical card and analyzes features of the first image, the analysis being sufficient to determine if the first image is likely to be usable by an OCR algorithm. If the user computing device determines that the first image is likely to be usable, then the first image is transmitted to an OCR system associated with the OCR algorithm. Upon a determination that the first image is unlikely to be usable, a second image of the card from the digital scan of the physical card is analyzed. The optical character recognition system performs an optical character recognition algorithm on the filtered card.