During 2008, we tracked more than a dozen new PFM launches. But it's been quiet since then. The last major launch was Thrive (now part of Lending Tree) at Finovate 2008. However, with Mint exiting with a $100+ million gain late last year, the space is bound to heat up again. 

It's not like there isn't room for quite a few entrants. The United States supports 15,000 banks and credit unions; there's no reason why there won't be dozens of successful PFMs.

The latest entrant, HelloWallet officially launched today (press release). While its features are similar to others, it has one claim to fame that's tough to beat, an endorsement from a former U.S. president. According to a Sep. 2009 BusinessWeek article, Bill Clinton, singled out HelloWallet in his address to the $20,000-per person Global Initiative event in September.

The for-profit site founded by former Brookings Institute fellow, Matt Fellowes (Brookings archive; inset with Bill Clinton), has attracted the attention of both politicians and foundations with its mission to:

...democratize access to honest, high-quality financial guidance for everyone.

HelloWallet appears to be an advertising-free business model with moderate $5/mo (or $48 annually) fees covering its costs. It's also being distributed free-of-charge through institutional partners such as The Rockefeller Foundation.

The startup has pledged to give away one subscription to a lower-income family for every five paid ones. That's a smart strategy, especially when what is being given has essentially zero marginal cost to deliver. HelloWallet's features include:

• full account aggregation so you can track all your financial accounts from one dashboard
• financial tools for investing, saving, reducing bank fees, and so on
• banking price comparisons
• budgeting tools
• bank-fee and credit-card-APR monitoring services
• goal-based savings

My take: I kicked the tires a bit, successfully setting up automated access to my checking account, and manually adding a few more assets. But the site was a little buggy today, hitting me with error messages and delivering dead links, so I'll hold off judgement until they get things stabilized. But it looks like a well-funded and promising effort so far.

HelloWallet homepage on launch day (8 Mar. 2010)

Note: For more information on the PFM space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

One of the most important trends in the online/mobile world is the so-called real-time Web. Here's how Wikipedia defines it:

...technologies and practices which enable users to receive information as soon as it's published, rather than requiring that they check a source periodically for updates.

Online banking should have gone real-time long ago, but privacy concerns and a legacy of batch processing -- not to mention the 100-year credit crisis -- have kept info delivery in very non-real-time at most financial institutions (note 1).

As balance/transaction email alerts appeared on the scene in 1996/1997, the perfect solution to keep consumers informed on a timely basis seemed assured. But for most users, financial alerts have not lived up to their promise. Why?

1. Users must remember to establish alerts while they are banking online

2. Users must establish proper parameters so they are not overwhelmed with alerts, or receive too little info

3. Those parameters must be tweaked as necessary

4. Users must select the proper email inbox(es) for the alerts

5. Users must read the alerts in a timely fashion

6. And of course, act on them if necessary

Frankly, that's just too much work for most online bankers. Sending alerts to a mobile device may help since it is typically more immediate than email. But that depends on the user and whether they really want banking messages in their text-message stream.

But we think many users, now accustomed to viewing a stream of info all day from Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, RSS, and so on, will want similar delivery of financial info. Some will want their financial info to stream into their overall news feed (e.g., via Facebook, Twitter, etc.), others will prefer a separate dedicated channel (e.g., Blippy note 2, Strings). And the old-school folk will still prefer email or text-message feeds.

Once the feed is established, users will want to interact with the data, for example:

• Tagging entries for budgeting/tax purposes
• Sharing specific transactions with friends, spouses, accountants
• Forwarding transactions to bookkeeping or managers for reimbursement
• Replying to the bank/merchant regarding incorrect transactions  
• Flagging transactions for later review

The real-time Web turns online banking on its head. Creating a daily dialogue with customers, rather than one-time sessions where users log in every few days, then hope nothing goes wrong before their next login.

There are advantages in both models, but it's not really your choice which one to offer. The world has gone real-time: You can either join in or have your customers migrate to Mint/Blippy/Wesabe to tap their financial feed.

Notes:
1. This is characterization of the U.S. situation; many other countries are much further ahead, and have been operating under real-time info-flow for years. 
2. We believe there are a number of practical applications for Blippy's technology; see our previous post.
3. For more info on financial messaging and alerts, Online Banking Report subscribers should review our 2003 report on the subject.

Last October, Vantage Credit Union launched one of the most novel banking services of 2009 (or ever for that matter), transactional banking through Twitter direct messaging (see note 1). The CU earned our OBR Best of the Web designation for its creativity.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear the service has gained much traction yet. The 103,000-member St. Louis, MO-based CU has 322 Twitter followers on its public feed and about 200 on its protected TweetMyMoney feed where the t-banking takes place (Note: Updated per comment). The majority of public feed followers are analysts, bloggers, and other credit unions.

But Vantage's Twitter move isn't about number of users. It's about keeping its brand relevant with its social networking members. And splashing Twitter across your homepage is a great way to do that (see screenshot below).

Now Vantage is back at it, partnering with Finovate-alum, Geezeo to offer state-of-the-art online personal financial management (press release). It will be fun to see what VCU EVP Eric Acree, a Filene i3 member, does with the Geezeo platform. I think it's safe to say that they will put a novel spin on PFM.   

VCU is Geezeo's fourth white-label credit union client; the other three are Stanford Federal Credit Union (previous post, note 1), Alliant Credit Union, and 1st Advantage FCU. The company is also working with 1st Mariner Bank (updated March 1 per comments).

Vantage CU continues to promote its Twitter features on its homepage
(26 Feb. 2010)

Notes:
1. Stanford FCU's website still says Geezeo-powered MyMo is "coming soon" (link to the Oct. 31, 2009, dated announcement), but the link to the new service has been pulled from the SFCU homepage. 
2. For more info, see our Online Banking Report: Leveraging Twitter (May 2009)

I don't know if it has anything to do with the publicity Mint received in recent months following its acquisition by Intuit or the promotional links from Quicken's website, but the online PFM juggernaut just blew the roof off its monthly traffic. According to Compete, in January, Mint had 1.7 million unique visitors, 600,000 more than a year earlier.

To provide a little context, not counting the Dec. to April tax-time traffic spike at Intuit, Mint's traffic is now slightly HIGHER than that of its parent company (see chart #1 below). That gives you a little understanding of why Intuit coughed up $170 million for the startup.

Another way to look at it: Mint now has as much traffic as the tenth largest U.S. retail bank, BB&T (see chart #2).

The interesting question for 2010: Now that Mint is part of the establishment, what startup will rise up to challenge it? Or will the banks, back on a path to profitability, fill the need going forward? 

Chart 1: Mint's traffic is now similar to Intuit's non-tax-time traffic

Source: Compete (link)

Chart 2: Mint now has about the same number of visitors as the tenth largest U.S. retail bank, BB&T
Note: Mint is blue line below

 
Source: Compete (link)

Note: For more information on the PFM space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

I had been intrigued about rumors that Microsoft and Citibank were partnering on a joint personal-finance venture called Bundle. I was hoping for the financial services version of an Apple launch.

OK, that's a little too high of a bar to set. I was really just hoping for the next Mint or at least something we hadn't seen before. To some extent, Bundle delivered, with Mint-like attention to design and deeper data than we've seen previously. But in other ways it's just a me-too personal finance site, FiLife 2.0. Bottom line, Bundle has been open only a week so it's way too early to predict where it's going or how it makes money. 

Bundle is a personal finance startup backed by Citibank, Microsoft, and Morningstar. Two of the key execs, including CEO Jaidev Shergill, are from Citi Growth Ventures, the group charged with commercializing products and ideas that have bubbled up within the banking giant. The startup also enlisted professional journalists, including Janet Paskin who's written for Dow Jones's SmartMoney Magazine among others.

Given that pedigree, the new site is kind of a SmartMoney Magazine meets your credit card statement with some social networking thrown in the mix.  

What distinguishes it from most personal finance content providers is that Bundle showcases proprietary data, sourced from Citibank's massive card-spending warehouse. The site gives center stage to data and shows household spending personalized to your specific location.

There's also professional personal finance advice mixed with stories and comment from the community. Even the articles use the database to illustrate points (screenshot 3). 

Naturally, it's well-integrated to Facebook. You cannot even comment unless you log in via Facebook Connect. You can follow Bundle on Twitter, of course, but surprisingly there is no blog or RSS feed.

And Bundle already has its own iPhone app called Vice Tracker (iTunes link) that makes shopping for non-essentials into a tongue-in-cheek game. The unique app was added to the store two weeks ago in the Lifestyle category. 

According to the FAQs, Bundle's business model is advertising, but there are no ads on the site yet, other than the logos of the backers (Microsoft is using its MSN Money brand). Presumably, they are looking for financial advertisers, but the Citibank connection might make that a harder sell.

Analysis
I like what Bundle is doing, creating a consumer-facing company around Citibank's cardholder data. But I can't figure out who they are targeting. Maybe they haven't decided yet.

If they want to attract data junkies like myself, the data needs to be more transparent and they need more robust tools to play with it. I enjoyed being able to compare the spending of my Seattle neighbors against that of my home town in Iowa (it's surprisingly similar). But I was left with a number of questions: 

• Where does the spending data come from? The FAQs are vague on saying that it comes from Citibank card data, government sources and "other third parties." 
• If it's primarily Citibank card data, is it really representative of the entire town or just the people that hold Citibank cards? For example, Bundle tells me (screenshot #3)  that the average dining out expense in Seattle is $115 and the most common spot is Starbucks followed by McDonalds. Something seems wrong with that.  
• And furthermore, are these estimates of all spending or just that on Citibank cards? And which Citi portfolios are included? What about business cards?
• The graphical bubbles are nice, but I like to view data in tables, especially when trying to drill down and do meaningful analysis. Is there some way to see the underlying numbers?

On the other hand, if Bundle is trying to attract readers looking for personal finance advice and discussion, the data is kind of in the way, more window dressing than anything else.

Final thoughts
The graphics are great and the spending data is interesting. But why would I come back? There's only so many times in one's life that you want to compare the shopping habits of your city vs. somewhere else.

Presumably, future versions will allow you to compare your actual spending to the Bundle averages using account-aggregation technology. This is a popular feature of Wesabe, and is one of the major tenets of what we've called "social personal finance" (note 1, 2).

I also expect they'll integrate Bundle into the Citibank cardholder site so its customers can do online comparisons while they are checking their statement online.  If Citi can document a spending lift from bundled Bundle, then the startup has proven its value. Armed with that success, it could be licensed to other big card issuers, increasing the value of the Bundle data for all users, attracting more users and more advertisers. The network effect. Perhaps that's the end game here. 

#1: Main Bundle page after selecting "Seattle" as location to show spending (29 Jan. 2010)

#2: Main page after drilling down through the "Food & Drink" bubble (link)
Note: Top five restaurants for dining out in Seattle are Starbucks, McDonalds, Subway, Red Robin and Cheesecake Factory. That sounds possible, but then the average purchase size is listed at $115. That's a lot of lattes or Big Macs.

#3: The ever-present "spending balls" hover above an article by Bundle Managing Editor Janet Paskin's short post. The balls compare the spending in Brooklyn with her hometown Seattle 
Note: Brooklyn comes out cheaper, see the solid circles (Brooklyn) in front of the cross-hatched ones (Seattle).

Notes:
1. See our previous reports on Social Personal Finance (2007) and Online Investment Communities (2008).
2. Wesabe would seem to be a great acquisition if Bundle wants to add the aggregation technology piece and jump-start its user base.  Blippy-like features would also make the site more sticky.
3. For more background on the software tools being used, see the article on Bundle in Microsoft's Financial Services publication published 22 Nov. 2009.

Blippy has been one of the more controversial financial entrants in the past few years. Observers have called it the "end of privacy as we know it," a way to take "oversharing to a dizzying new level," and a "great tool for phishers." And those are just the people who like it.

Blippy, a kind of Twitter meets Yodlee service, allows users to stream their purchase activity to the startup's website. Users can choose to publish data from credit and debit cards, bank accounts, and/or directly from purchase activity at ecommerce-partners sites (see list below). It's the ecommerce transaction stream that provides the richest data describing the actual product purchased or rented rather than just a dollar total.

For example, here's an entry from @Julia who's connected her Amazon account directly to Blippy (note 1)  As you can see the Amazon purchases are shown in detail and one of the items, a giraffe teether, has elicited a question/comment from a friend (highlighting ours):

In comparison, credit card transactions list only the merchant name and not what was purchased. However, Blippy allows users to annotate their transactions to add that detail, as you can see in the following entry. 

One of the most common ways Blippy is used is to stream media consumption via iTunes and Netflix. Here are the three Netflix movies on their way to @crobertsjr:

The Palo Alto-based startup received a $1.6 million angel round in January 2010 from Ron Conway, Jason Calacanis, Twitter's Evan Williams, Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures, and others. 

How it works
I got my first taste of Blippy after it opened to the public on Jan. 14. It's simple to get started, calling for just an email address, screenname and password. You also have the option of finding friends using your email address book or choosing from a list of 13 suggested people including Blippy founder Philip Kaplan (@PUD) and interstar Jason Calacanis (@jason).

But you don't even need to register for Blippy to see it in action. There's a live stream on the homepage that anyone can watch (see screenshot below). If Blippy follows the Twitter/Facebook model, they will soon have an API available that will let outside developers tap the data stream.

Usage stats

• Number of beta users: More than 5,000 who streamed $4.5 million worth of transactions
• Most-streamed merchant: Netflix with 54,000 entries
• Most prolific spender (that I ran across): Foo Bar (@foo), who does not identify himself other than CEO at a gaming startup, has linked his business credit card and streamed more than 350 purchases worth more than $300,000 (he's a big online advertiser at Google, MySpace, Facebook).
• Most-followed user: Leo Laporte (@leolaporte), from the Premiere Radio Network, with more than 2,600 followers

Features/benefits

Data sharing within workgroups:

• Ability to share financial transactions within a family, a workgroup, or small business. It would be a great way for financial gatekeepers, e.g., the bookkeeper, CFO, or even board members/investors to keep tabs on company spending (see @foo above).
• Ability to annotate expense streams. Users can add short descriptions to expense items so their followers can see the specifics.
• Ability to discuss/comment on expense items. For example, CFO can ask "why did our Google AdWords expense spike yesterday?" and anyone in the group can comment back with an answer or speculation. We use Yammer in our company for this type of back and forth. 

Product research/social networking:

• Ability to find other customers of the same store
• Ability to discuss product or media purchases with friends or strangers
• Ability to post positive/negative info about purchases (yours or others)
• Ability to find previous purchasers of a product you are considering (currently not supported through search)
• Ability to compare how much people paid for a certain item (not currently supported through search)

Personal financial management:

• Ability to annotate expenses for future reporting (e.g., marking taxable items)
• Store transactions free for as long as Blippy keeps the servers running
• Ability to search own transactions

Financial institution opportunities
1. Card companies and banks should create similar sharing functionality for alerts; especially for small business clients. While public posting of purchase data may never have mass appeal, there are many private uses for real-time transaction data.

2. PFM's should be building this functionality now to get out in front of Mint/Intuit who could simply acquire Blippy and incorporate real-time data flow within weeks. 

3. Once the Blippy API becomes available, banks should tap it to allow their customers to use it directly from within online banking.

Analysis
Whether Blippy lives on as a standalone service is difficult to predict. It depends on whether these capabilities are incorporated into other social networks, particularly, Facebook (note 2) and Twitter. And how fast card issuers move to make real-time transaction info easily available to their own customers.

But regardless of where the company nets out, Blippy should be credited with pioneering real-time financial transaction flow, something every financial institution and ecommerce company will support in the coming years. As a result, we are awarding Blippy an OBR Best of the Web award, our first of 2010 and just the third in the past 14 months (note 3, previous winners).   

Blippy Homepage (14 Jan. 2010 7 PM Pacific)

 Optional sign-in to Gmail, Yahoo or AOL to locate friends on Blippy 

Purchases/activity at these merchants can be automatically tracked
Note: 13 ecommerce merchants currently participate (Amazon, Apple iTunes, Audible, Blockbuster, GoDaddy, GroupOn, Netflix, SeamlessWeb, Stubhub, Threadless, Wine Library, Woot, Zappos)

The Blippy real-time transaction stream
Note: You can choose to watch all activity or just that of the people you are following

Notes:
1. If she hadn't given Blippy her Amazon login info and linked only her credit card, there would be no product detail. It would just show as $80.95 spent at Amazon.
2. Blippy is similar to Facebook's ill-fated Beacon service launched in Nov. 2007. The service was quickly toned down, then eventually dismantled, due to the privacy brouhaha that ensued. Blippy is very different because its users are signing up specifically to share purchase info. 
3. OBR Best of the Web awards, from Online Banking Report, are given periodically to companies that pioneer new online and mobile banking features. It is not an endorsement of the company or product, just recognition for what we believe is an important development. Blippy is the 76th recipient since we began awarding it in 1997. There were just two winners in 2009.

It looks like we are just days away from the launch of the first Geezeo-powered private-branded online PFM. Fifty-thousand-member Stanford Federal Credit Union, one of the first financial institutions in the world to offer Internet banking in the mid-90s, has been promoting the soon-to-be-launched personal financial manager for several months.

The service, called MyMo is currently in final testing with SFCU employees. It will run both online (screenshot 1 and 2, below) and through a mobile app (inset).

MyMo has been the lead story in the CU's in-house newsletter for two months running (see screenshots 3 and 4). In November, the service was said to coming "this month." Then in December, it hedged with a "coming soon" message. There's still no specific info on when MyMo will launch, but there's a promotion running on the middle of the SFCU's homepage and Facebook page (see screenshots below), so it must be soon (note 1).  

The future: While private-branded online PFM is not new, Bank of America has several million users of its Yodlee-powered solution, the concept appears to be gaining momentum. Intuit/Digital Insight are now powering hundred of FIs while Wesabe and Jwaala have also made in-roads into the CU world. We'll see lots of innovation in this area in the coming decade (see note 2).

1. MyMo desktop: Dashboard view (link)

2. MyMo desktop: Add a goal

3. SFCU's November 2009 newsletter (link)

4. SFCU's December 2009 newsletter (link)

5. SFCU homepage (17 Dec. 2009)

6. SFCU Facebook page (link)

Notes:
1. While I think it makes sense to run a teaser campaign for a new product, SFCU should provide more detail on when the service will launch and why it's been delayed. Members want the service to be fully tested, so they won't mind waiting a bit longer as long as the CU is upfront with them about the timing.
2. For more information on the PFM space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

I love startups. Just when you think you've seen everything, along comes someone doing something that no one would have ever thought of five years ago, or in this case one year ago.

The latest inspiration: Blippy. The service allows you to automatically broadcast your credit or debit card purchases using the Twitter/Facebook model (see screenshot below; note 1).

The first question everyone asks is why? (see comments at TechCrunch) But really, it's not much different than broadcasting personal details via Twitter or your whereabouts via Foursquare, especially if you limit viewing to friends. The founder, serial entrepreneur, Philip Kaplan explains in the TechCrunch interview, that he has one credit card for "social purchases" broadcast on Blippy and another for purchases he prefers to keep private.

Blippy will contain privacy controls that allow users to share everything or keep it within a closed loop of friends. The company also envisions many other privacy controls to turn the service off and on, allow users to approve transactions before publishing, suppress certain merchants, or merchant categories, and so on.

The use cases shown so far are centered around media purchases, for example using it to automatically tweet (blip?) what song or movie you bought on iTunes or social "check ins" where the service lets people know you just bought coffee at Starbucks. But I can see where it would be helpful for spouses to "broadcast" purchases only to each other. Or for a salesperson to broadcast their purchases to their assistant to build expense reports on the fly. 

The service is in closed alpha (only in use by a handful of friends and family, note 2) as the three-person company gears up for a launch. You can follow Kaplan on Twitter (@pud) for more info.

My take: I like the idea of easily sharing purchases with joint-account holders or a bookkeeper. But many (most?) online banking systems and PFMs already allow this through the alerts system. You may want to boost education efforts on this capability.

As for Tweeting about songs downloaded via iTunes, wouldn't most users prefer to maintain more control over that by simply using Twitter or Facebook to directly type a short note? But we know from experience, if there's a way to do something with less effort, it stands a good chance of succeeding.  

I'm not expecting widespread adoption any time soon, but I think there is a market for sharing spending transactions.

Here's something for innovative FIs to consider: Add a "share this" button next to credit/debit card transaction and let users send the info via email, Twitter or Facebook with a couple keystrokes (see inset from FiLife).

I know it sounds far-fetched, but it might be just the thing to make your card stand out with heavy users of social media.

Blippy homepage showing spending stream (16 Dec. 2009)

Note:
1. For more info in Twitter, see our Online Banking Report on the technology published in May.
2. Twitter's Evan Williams is using Blippy as shown in screenshot taken by CNET's Rafe Needleman in his article earlier this week.

If anyone still wondered how serious Intuit is about incorporating the Mint brand into its portfolio after its $170 million acquisition, take a look at the latest version of the Quicken sales site. Mint is prominently featured (see first screenshot below), especially if you scroll one "ad spot" over (second screenshot).

I also found Mint mentioned at PayTrust, Intuit's bill management site (third screenshot). There's even a small plug on the Quicken Online login page (fourth screenshot).

However, on Mint's site the co-branding is not reciprocated. Quicken is not mentioned at all and Intuit is relegated to 8-point type at the bottom of the page (fourth screenshot).

The latest traffic figures from Compete support the theory that Intuit is de-emphasizing Quicken Online in favor of Mint. Traffic to <quicken.intuit.com> fell 50% in November to about 400,000, while Mint held steady at about 3x that, 1.2 million unique visitors.

Source: Compete, 10 Dec 2009 (link)

Quicken homepage on default choice, Quicken 2010 (link; 9 Dec. 2009, 11 PM)

Quicken homepage with Mint.com selected from scrolling choices
Note: Yellow highlight is mine

Intuit PayTrust homepage (link)

Quicken Online login page (link)

Mint homepage
Intuit mentioned twice at bottom of page (yellow highlight is mine). 

Note: For more information on the PFM space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

A few days ago, we predicted there would be tens of thousands of financial institution iPhone apps as the big banks released dozens to support their major business lines. PNC Bank and Wells Fargo were the two examples we cited.

There's another multi-app bank: Chase. In our search for an iPhone gift planner to replace the web-based Zions Bank service, we ran discovered the bank's Gift Planner (iTunes link).

Version 1.0 was released in time for the holidays last year (3 Dec. 2008), but it looks like Chase didn't take over ownership/sponsorship until release 2.0 in August. The app is supported by an excellent small website at yourgiftplanner.com that displays the app and solicits feedback.

The app and website are 100% Chase branded. The only indication that a third party is involved is a notation in the iTunes store that the app is sold by The Archer Group (inset), a Wilmington, DE-based digital agency.

Evidently, the app didn't show up on our radar because it's placed in the App Store Productivity category instead of Financial. The app doesn't appear to be mentioned on the Chase main website. A site search there came up blank.

Review: It's great looking app that can be used for any holiday. The app supports "shake for help," an advanced feature. The integration with your contact list makes it easy to add new contacts without typing, although you must wade through your entire list. And, the process of adding gifts is a bit tedious. You have to add a gift to the master gift list, then go to each person and add the gift to their profile. It would be better if you could simply type a gift on the fly.

iPhone users have been relatively unimpressed, giving the latest version a 2-star rating out of five; pretty low for a professional app (see inset).

It's a good branding tool for Chase, but it the app itself could use retooling.

Gift Planner iPhone screenshots (24 Nov 2009)

Gift Planner website (link)

Note: For more info on mobile banking on the iPhone see our March Online Banking Report.

Last year, I discovered a cool little web-based PFM app from Zions Bank, the Holiday Gift Planner (see previous post). It helps plan and track holiday gift lists and purchases (see second screenshot below).

I used it to track 2008 holiday purchases for our kids. I credit the app with not only keeping us on budget, but making the process a little less harried. I liked it so much, I awarded it with an OBR Best of the Web award. My only complaint: it should be an iPhone app.

But this weekend when I clicked my bookmark for the site to enter my son's "wish list", I received an error message, "site not found." I was afraid Zions had discontinued the service. After a search, I found that the site had been replaced by a similar, but more advanced PFM site, called Zions Bank eZ Budget (running on its own URL).

eZ Budget remains free and open to anyone, customers or non-customers. It still has the gift planner module which is very similar to last year's model (second screenshot). One addition: integrated links to the Zions website to see savings or financing options (see top-left in screenshot 2). And like last year, a Zions banner ad runs across the top.

But it's been expanded to have three other robust planning modules:

• Monthly planner (screenshot 3)
• Project planner (screenshot 4)
• Event planner (screenshot 5)

Unlike last year when the gift planner was plugged on its homepage, there is no mention of the PFM module on the bank's website. However, eZ Budget is prominently mentioned on the bank's Facebook page (screenshot 6). And according to Compete, the new site has about double the traffic, 4,000 unique visitors, compared to 2,000 a year ago.

 
Source: Compete, 23 Nov 2009

My take: This is a simple and cost-effective way to provide basic budgeting tools to bank customers. I wish Zions had also kept the standalone Holiday Gift Planner which had an attractive holiday look and was less daunting to begin using. But I can understand why the bank would not want to support two planning tools. More importantly, the iPhone version is still on my wish list. More on that tomorrow. 

1. Zions eZ Budget homepage (23 Nov 2009)

2. Gift Planner module
Note: Default setting is "Christmas"; but can choose Birthday, Valentines, Wedding, Mother's day, Father's day, Hanukkah, or create your own.

3. Monthly Planner module

4. Project planner module
Note: Default setting is "home remodel"; but can choose landscaping, baby room, or create your own.

5. Event planner module
Note: Default setting is "wedding"; but can choose birthday, vacation, or bridal shower or create your own.

6. Zions Facebook page (link)
Note: Zions is giving away a $100 Best Buy card each month to new Facebook fans.

Note:
1. For more information on the PFM space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

Bank of America's latest online effort is a personal finance educational site at <learn.bankofamerica.com> that includes consumer polls, money savings tips, videos and articles. Bank products are sprinkled throughout but the marketing is relatively restrained.

It's a solid effort. Good, concise copy married to an attractive graphical layout. And for a bank the size of Bank of America, it makes perfect business sense. The site moves a little product, builds the brand, shows off the bank's consumer-friendly side, provides material for PR campaigns, and gains some CRA credit (note 1). 

But I'm not sure how much usage it will get other than the curious driven to it from banners within online banking. That's how ended up there today after paying my BofA credit card bill online (see second screenshot below).

Given Bank of America's 30 million online banking customers, they must not be driving much traffic to the site yet. According to Compete, traffic surpassed 100,000 for the first time in October. July was the first month that traffic was registered at the site.

Unique monthly visitors to BofA's personal finance tips site (July through October, 2009)

Source: Compete

Other than enabling an RSS feed for article updates, the site has no Web 2.0 or social media features. No blog. No forum. It's just a very pretty face on personal finance 101 material. It will be interesting to see where they take it.

Learn.BankofAmerica.com homepage (link, 13 Nov. 2009)
Note: I completed the poll on the middle of the page, so the results are shown rather than the poll question.

Logoff screen (13 Nov 2009, 3 PM Pacific)

Note:
1. CRA = Community Reinvestment Act which requires banks to help meet the financial and credit needs of low- to-moderate-income consumers.

I finally finished our latest report on small business online banking last night. Just as I was about to upload it, I realized there was something missing in the "dream online banking solution" for small businesses.

So I stopped the "presses" and added it to the report. What was the missing piece? A financial and business management dashboard integrated with online banking.

I poked around the web today and found a few interesting products (see update below), none of which were quite what I was looking for, and had no direct connection to financial institutions:

• MyBizHomepage has a dashboard that integrates with QuickBooks and sounds pretty slick. But there website hasn't been updated for more than a year, so not sure if this is a viable business or just a hobby site. I have an inquiry in to the owner.
• DreamFactory Software also offers QuickBooks-integrated dashboards. I found it in the new Intuit App Center for QuickBooks add-ins (here). It's a powerful program, but not the kind of plug-and-play dashboard I'm looking for.
• iDashboards: Has impressive sample dashboards to view. None integrate directly with online banking, but many include financial data (see screenshot below).

So I'm still looking for financial institution examples. Know any? Comment below or email me. It's too late to make our report, but we'll report it here.

iDashboards mockup of a healthcare "billing scorecard" (link, 28 Oct 2009)

Update (29 Oct 2009):

Here's another QuickBooks dashboard from QuickGauge.com:

I was poking around the various small business online accounting sites today researching our next Online Banking Report and thinking about which service would suit our business, given that Microsoft is pulling the plug on Money.

I was already familiar with Outright.com (a Finovate 2009 presenter; demo video coming soon), FreshBooks, and LessAccounting. But I was completely surprised by one contender in the free category: Intuit QuickBooks Online.

The software giant offers three flavors of online-only accounting (see screenshot below; full comparison here):

• QuickBooks Online Free: Create and send invoices, print checks, track money flow for up to 20 customers and run basic reports; even includes email support
• QuickBooks Online Basic: In addition to the above, for $9.95/mo, users can manage an unlimited number of customers, set permissions for others to access data, and choose from a library of 40 standard reports
• QuickBooks Online Plus: Full-fledged QuickBooks for $34.95/mo, mimics most features of QuickBooks Pro (see comparison here)

Financial institution opportunities:
All four online accounting companies offer free versions and premium fee-based options (note 1). Consider linking to them from your small business resource center. For extra credit, develop a co-branded version you can offer your customers or negotiate discounts for the fee-based versions.

Intuit's QuickBooks Online product line (14 Oct 2009)

Notes:
1. Outright.com is currently free for all users, but says it is working on value-added, fee-based options.
2. For more info on the small biz space, see our Online Banking Report: Small & Microbusiness Banking (June 2004). Note: Anyone who purchases the 2004 version now, will automatically receive the newer version when it's published later this month.

The rumors broke yesterday and the confirmation came today. Intuit is buying two-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Mint for $170 million (see note 1). Few people are surprised by this move or the price. Mint's latest VC investors had just invested at a $140 million valuation a few weeks ago, so $170 mil is in line with that. It's also a 5x return to the total VC investment of $32 million, so everyone associated with Mint has to be pretty happy, especially in an environment where most assets have fallen by double digits in the past two years.

The bigger question is whether the startup is worth $170 million? To Intuit, I think the answer is definitely yes (see below).

Intuit shareholders were indifferent with no real movement in share price today (see inset) on lower-than-normal trading volume (note 2). Because of the deal, Intuit lowered per-share net income estimates by 2 cents ($6.5 million loss) for FY 2010, and says there will be no material impact after that.

Apparently, Intuit will keep the Mint brand, at least for now. Mint CEO Aaron Patzer will be general manager of Intuit's personal finance products, both online AND desktop.

I'm no M&A expert, but here's why $170 million sounds reasonable to me:

• At Intuit's current multiple (20x), Mint needs to generate approximately $10 million in annual profits to break even for shareholders. With 1+ million users at Mint, that's $10 per user per year, less than a buck a month.
• While Mint isn't likely making that type of profit today, the combination of lower costs from Intuit back-end systems and additional revenues from upselling Intuit services (TurboTax, Cuckoos, and others), should elevate Mint to a $10 million-plus business unit relatively quickly.
• Intuit needs an entree to the young-and-frugal segment, and Mint can be the starting point with users migrating to Quicken Online (which can be returned to a fee-based, advertising-free service), TurboTax, and/or QuickBooks over time.
• Plus there's a bunch of intangibles that are difficult to quantify until you see how Intuit handles the Mint.com user base. Even though there's the usual grousing from Mint users today, in reality, Intuit's trustworthy brand name should be able to retain current users and grow the base.

Here's how I break down the purchase price:

$5 to $10 mil >>> Assets: Code, IP, employees, etc.
$10 to $20 mil >> Brand: Name, URL, traffic, awards, etc.
$100+ mil >>>>> Customers (1,000,000 at $100 each)
$25 to $50 mil >> Option value

Notes:
1. Mint won the audience voting for Best of Show at both our 2007 and 2008 Finovate conferences. If you want to see and meet the next Mint, we have a few dozen tickets left for Finovate 2009 on 29 Sep (purchase tickets here).
2. Last week, shares fell $0.40 or 1.4%.

Last September, six online personal finance managers launched in a single month (previous post). Since then, just a handful of new PFMS have appeared online. Most newcomers have instead chosen the iPhone where more than 1,000 finance apps have launched in the past 12 months.

The iPhone is great for on-the-go transaction processing, but most PFM users will still do their heavy lifting at their computer, setting budgets, tracking expenses, planning for the future, preparing tax returns and so on. So the online venue is still the key competitive battleground. 

Two new online efforts have come to my attention in recent weeks. We'll look at them in more detail later this year (see note 1). 

• Cashflow INSITE, from Neuralus. The Winnipeg, Canada-based startup is looking to partner with banks and credit unions to deliver the PFM. The company is also targeting the financial advisor market where they have a number of independent advisors paying a flat fee (currently under $100/mo) to support up to 100 clients on the Cashflow INSITE platform. 
• PocketSmith, a New Zealand-based firm which launched its beta last year, uses the popular calendar approach to tracking personal cash flow and appears to be gaining some traction in the United States. It's monthly unique U.S. visitor total in July was more than 8,000 according to Compete (see chart below). That puts it at number 13 of the busiest online PFMs in the U.S. according to estimates from Compete (note 2). It's also the highest ranked newcomer to the chart and the non-US PFM with the most U.S. traffic.

PocketSmith monthly traffic estimates from Compete
Monthly unique visitors Aug. 2008 through July 2009

Cashflow INSITE homepage (21 Aug 2009)

PocketSmith homepage (21 Aug 2009)

Notes:
1. We covered the personal financial management space several times in Online Banking Report, most recently: Personal Finance Features for Online Banking; Social Personal Finance; and Online Investing Communities.
2. See the current issue of Online Banking Report: 2010 Planning Guide, for the U.S. traffic estimates for 28 online PFMs.

Microsoft will stop selling its Microsoft Money packaged personal finance management (PFM) software at the end of this month (FAQ here). Online services will expire Jan. 31, 2011, or earlier depending on when users activated their program.

The company will continue its online-only account management and bill pay services at MSN Money. Banks supporting direct downloads to the program, such as US Bank and Wells Fargo, will have to migrate users to other options, most likely Intuit's Quicken.

For me, it's an end of an era. The main reason I became involved in the online banking industry was to participate in a four-bank group that worked with Microsoft to add online banking and bill pay to Microsoft Money 3.0 (note 1), released in Feb. 1994 (see inset). It was an industry milestone and a major coup for the company at the time, bringing online banking to its PFM more than two years ahead of Quicken. 

So, after 15 years of using the program, I'll finally have to make the long overdue move to QuickBooks to manage our company finances. But to be safe, I'm going with QuickBooks online, which I'm guessing will not become obsolete in my lifetime.

Microsoft Money Plus page announces the end of the line (link, 9 June 2009)

Notes:
1. According to Wikipedia, Microsoft Money is currently on version 17.

Usually, it's the big ideas that get all the press. Last week alone, Microsoft launched a new search engine (Bing), Google announced a new way to communicate (Google Wave), and Facebook began rolling out an alt-payment service to its 200 million users. 

Those have intriguing long-term ramifications, but can they save you money today? 

Here's something a little more pragmatic: A tool that promises to make it easy to challenge your tax assessment, potentially saving hundreds or thousands of dollars annually. Enter LowerMyAssessment.com (LMA).

I saw a few screenshots of the service during the company's application to debut at FinovateStartup 2009 last month (demo video here). But I couldn't use the service until a few weeks ago.

How it works
Consumers visiting LMA can use the website's free tool to check their home's value against current market estimates. LMA taps public databases to determine tax-assessed values and calculates market value from various third-party sources such as Zillow.

The company then makes the simple math calculation and informs users if the value of their home is under the tax-assessed value. If it is, LMA provides forms and instructions to challenge tax assessments with the local assessor's office.

In our test case, using an address in Seattle, one of 10 states currently served by LMA, we were told that its assessed value was $300,000 more than the market value (note 2). LMA encouraged me to register and let them help me challenge that assessment.

Registered users complete an online form with info needed to challenge their assessment (see screenshot 3 below). After completing that form, users must pay $125 to complete the challenge process and receive their FairValue Report (shown above).  

Analysis
While the cost-saving potential is significant, the challenge for LMA is getting consumers to shell out $125 for something they can conceivably do themselves (note 3). It took us just a few minutes using Google to uncover the challenge forms and procedures at the King County website. And market value estimates can be pulled from Zillow and its competitors.   

To reduce sticker shock, the company recently removed the big $125 price tag from its homepage (see screenshot 1) and is now emphasizing the free lookup feature (screenshot 2). I can understand downplaying a three-figure fee, especially online. But now they've gone too far the other way. I cannot find the price of the service anywhere on the website. It wasn't disclosed until I completed my registration and filled out the challenge form (see screenshot 4 below).

There's also the small matter of getting the word out. The major market opportunity will largely be gone once home prices get back to their pre-recession levels, even though there will always be cases where consumers feel their assessment is unfair. But LMA needs to team with major financial or real estate firms as soon as possible to reach large groups of potential customers. 

Bank and credit union opportunities
As discussed in previous posts, direct fee income is scarce in online banking, at least in the United States. Aside from credit bureau monitoring, there are few up-front fees that consumers are willing to pay. Certainly, banks earn billions from the underlying checking, debit, and credit card accounts, but nothing from the value added online.

It's possible the service could be replicated by a bank or mortgage provider using available APIs from Zillow or others. But for most banks, it would be far simpler to outsource the service to LMA or other specialists.

If the service were sold for $100+, with revenue shared 50/50, a bank or credit union could earn a respectable profit while providing a unique and free service to customers; however, the folks at City Hall may not be so appreciative. If city government is a big customer, you might tread carefully here.

1. New LowerMyAssessment homepage emphasizes free (2 June 2009)

2. Previous homepage disclosed the substantial fee up-front (12 May 2009)

3. Online appeal form for King County Washington (2 June 2009)

4. $125 (+tax) fee is not disclosed until checkout (2 June 2009)

Notes:
1. States currently covered: Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Washington
2. That was on May 11. Now, three weeks later, LMA shows the house having declined another 20%. Home prices are certainly fluctuating, but not that much. It appears that LMA has switched to using Zillow's low estimate instead of the mid-range one. That may help sell more services, but it's a bit misleading. It would be much better to show the range of potential market values pulling data from all three third-party valuation sites, in much the way RedFin does. 
3. They also have some work to do in clarifying the buying process. It's not really clear exactly what you are buying at checkout. Are you submitting a property-tax challenge at that point? What about the FairValue Report? When do you see that? But we'll cut them slack on that since they just launched a few weeks ago.

Yesterday, Rudder suffered an embarrassing email glitch that affected 732 customers. In the pre-Internet days, no one other than those few hundred customers, and a few of their friends, would have heard about it. Even in the days before blogs became common, pre-2007, it's unlikely the story would have made it to the mainstream press.

And even last year, before Twitter, the story might have died without ever crossing over to the mass media. But when it comes to breaking news and company gaffes, it's a whole new ball game. Everyone wants 15 minutes of fame as an investigative reporter, and Twitter is the dream platform.

I'm going to recap the problem, and how the news broke, in excruciating detail, because it illustrates the power of Twitter- and blog-fueled grassroots reporting. If you are a financial services company, think about how you could use social media to help with damage control should something similar happen to you.  

What happened at Rudder
According to the detailed description first published in TechCrunch and then later published by the company on a new blog created specifically for this issue, an email upgrade the night of May 18 caused 732 users to receive dozens of email updates containing balance and transaction information of other users. Only Rudder users with email addresses that begin with "a" or "b" received the erroneous emails because the company stopped the email job at that point after realizing the "upgrade" had gone terribly wrong.

Besides seeing the info in the email updates, the bigger security/privacy problem was that unauthorized users were able to click through email links to access the full aggregated account at Rudder.com (see screenshot in the TechCrunch article). However, at no time could anyone actually log in to anyone's bank account or move money in any way.

Luckily, Rudder, like all account-aggregation companies, does not include account numbers or personal details in the updates. However, the email addresses of each user was displayed, so any of the 732 customers using an email address at Rudder that can be traced back to their real name, had their financial details exposed to hundreds of users. 

How the news broke
At 5:36 AM yesterday (19 May), Twitter user @adambassador tweeted this:

And @adambassador didn't stop at that. He took the time to search and communicate warnings directly to several other users who'd recently mentioned "Rudder.com" on Twitter. Adambassador would go on to tweet 21 times yesterday about the Rudder problem.

One of the people who heard from @adambassador was financial services consultant and blogger, Mike Linskey (@mikelinskey) who'd just Tweeted about several of the PFM companies he'd seen at our FinovateStartup conference, including Rudder.com. Mike then posted the problem to his Fincision blog at 8:04 AM, and at Mike's request, adambassador posted screenshots of the emails to document the problem, which were then published in Mike's blog entry.

At 10:05 AM, using Twitter, Mike alerted the blog Mashable about the Rudder problem. A half-hour later, Mashable, the fifth largest blog in the country (see note 1), posted the story citing adambassador's tweets and Mike's blog entry. From the Mashable blog entry (below), the problem was retweeted 115 times (see the retweet button below on left).

Then at noon, the second largest blog, TechCrunch, with more than 2 million subscribers, posted the story. And because of high comment activity, it stayed on the top of TechCrunch most of the day (see screenshot below), generating 58 comments.

How Rudder handled it
By almost any standard, Rudder did a good job responding. Although their reply took more than 10 hours since the error was first reported on Twitter, Rudder's CEO posted a detailed comment on the TechCrunch (scroll down to his comment at 4:38 PM here) and Mashable posts, apologizing for the error and explaining in great detail what had happened. 

In addition, Rudder created a special "Rudder Update" blog (see screenshot below) apologizing, explaining the mishap and exactly what info was mistakenly displayed, and detailing the steps they were taking to fix the problem and help affected customers:

• Turned off the email system entirely
• Contacted each affected user individually and offered them a complimentary subscription to an identity theft service
• Engaged an independent security auditor to survey its system and look for weaknesses
• Published a URL for users to go in and delete their accounts if desired

Analysis
Rudder did a good job considering the situation. It was smart to comment on TechCrunch and Mashable, and the new damage-control blog site was a savvy move. And the company did an exceptionally good job with the tone and wording of its mea culpa.

That said, the company could have used social media better. The company's Twitter page (@userudder) and that of its CEO (@nikhilroy) were silent all day. A short Twitter posting, even "we've stopped all emails and are working on it" would have reassured users and potentially made the Mashable post less alarming. Also, the company didn't have a blog, so there was no place where they could post periodic updates during the day. It was complete silence for 11 hours, other than the interview with TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld mid-day.

Impact on third-party PFM credibility
While this was embarrassing and violated the privacy of several hundred users, there will likely be no financial loss to anyone. There was no data breach or stolen account numbers. Even a single bank account statement stolen from a mailbox could cause more potential financial damage.

And even though third-party PFM providers have had a relatively spotless record for security/privacy, this mistake, now well-documented in two of the largest online publications in the world, will be cited in the media for years, to cast doubt on the security of online personal finance.

It might cost the industry a point or two in short-term market share, but it would take something much worse to materially slow growth. Even Rudder should be fine. By addressing the issue in a highly professional way on the same day, most customers will be reassured, at least those that weren't directly impacted.

The bigger lesson here is the need for damage-control procedures that take into account the power and speed of new media (note 3). The entire episode could have--prior to Twitter and the blogosphere--been known to just a few hundred customers of a very small company, but instead traveled from a lone tweet to a large splash across the homepage of a major publication, all within a 6-hour period.     

TechCrunch featured the Rudder post on its main page most of the afternoon (19 May 2009)

Special damage control blog created by Rudder yesterday
(19 May 2009; link)

Note:
1. Ranking by Technorati authority (here)
2. Thanks to Mike Linskey for the tip yesterday morning.
3. Also, account aggregation users should use an email address that is not directly associated with their name.

Yesterday, Intuit launched its first native app for the iPhone, Quicken Online Mobile. It's already risen to number four in the Finance category (note 1), and will likely hit number one given the number of Intuit fans using the iPhone. Currently, E*Trade's new Mobile Pro claims the top spot.

Intuit has incorporated some interesting features including this user-friendly "what's left until payday" feature. Users can access a graphical map of their future balance level (below) and get a warning (right) if the account looks like it will run out before the next payday.

Intuit also uses the GPS/location-based capabilities of the iPhone with a built-in ATM finder (click on inset for larger view). And finally, users are able to input transactions on the fly to get a real-time look at the impact to their budgets on the latest expenses.

The two-minute YouTube video (link) is worth watching to see how to position your iPhone PFM as a mobile financial assistant (speaker is Intuit product manager, Barron Ernst):

There are a number of personal finance apps available on the iPhone platform including Mint, Wesabe (announced Tuesday at FinovateStartup), MoneyTrackin, iBearSoft Software, and dozens more. 

Notes:
1. Quicken's mobile app is number four in the free apps section of the iTunes Finance apps section as of 8:30 AM Pacific time, 2 May 2009. It has 73 user reviews with an average 4-star rating (excellent). In comparison, Mint which launched its iPhone app in December has nearly 13,000 reviews.
2. According to VentureBeat, Quicken Online passed the 1-million user mark in mid-April.

Apple must be one of the more lucrative advertisers these days at the Wall Street Journal. Apple has bought the back page more times than I can count to show off the iPhone and more-importantly, the diversity of applications available (see inset, note 1).

Lately, Apple has run "theme" ads showing applications related to a single category. Last week (Thurs, 9 April), the back of the A section showed personal finance apps (see left column below). Yesterday, the apps all supported small business and ran on the back of Marketplace (B) section (see right column below).

The only app to make both lists: personal finance superstar, Mint, which even scored top billing in the personal finance page, occupying the upper-left corner, where it's blurb would likely score the highest readership. 

The Apple website also has themed app guides. The managing money page (see screenshot below) features again features Mint, which gets the biggest graphic, Bank of America, who's app was featured in dozens of Apple ads in 2008 and earlier this year, Bloomberg, Gas Cubby, iXpenseIt, Save Benjis, and Home Finder.

Bottom line: Financial institutions should think about how to add similar money management functionality to their mobile and online offers. As Aite's Ron Shevlin pointed out in a comment here last week (emphasis added):

.....(the FinovateStartup participants) you talk about are helping people manage their financial lives, while the banks are [still] focused on helping people manage their financial accounts.

Big difference.

Table: iPhone apps listed in recent WSJ ads (clockwise from upper left)

Apple's Money Management page on its Website (link, 16 Apr 2009)

Notes:
1. My apologies for the image quality, taken via iPhone naturally.
2. For more info, see our latest Online Banking Report: Mobile Banking via iPhone.

Launched in Oct. 2007, Xpenser (see note 1) is a financial tool designed for tracking items for business expense reports. Monthly traffic is about 6,000 unique visitors according to Compete.

To understand Xpenser, visualize how Mint works, then think of the opposite.

• Mint is full automated; Xpenser is all one-off data entry.
• Mint has graphics that will blow you away; Xpenser has lists.
• Mint requires you to divulge your banking usernames and passwords; Xpenser just needs your email address.
• With Mint, you can track your bank accounts, investment accounts and net worth; Xpenser only helps you submit your next expense report.

Xpenser's mission from its website:

We were fed up with how painful expense reports and tracking were. After many experiments we found a workable solution: record expenses as soon as they happen and forget about them.

How it works
After a registration process that requires no more than your email address, you can begin immediately submitting expenses to the service via:

• Email by sending a message to e@xpenser.com with the free-form expense listed in the subject line
• iPhone optimized site (see inset); it's not in the App Store, but you can add an Xpenser button to your iPhone by navigating to the Xpenser website and pressing the + button
• SMS by sending a text message to 66937 (MOZES), using "exp" followed by the free-form expense description
• Voice via Jott or Dial2Do (both free services)
• Twitter via direct message from your registered Twitter account
• IM via Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, MSN Messenger, or Google Talk
• Browser search box in Firefox or IE 7+ (see below)
• Secure website via standard input form

Once the expenses are collected, users go online and move each expense to the appropriate report. Transaction amounts and descriptions can be edited.

The company is building open APIs, so developers, including banks, can use the service to kick-start their own personal finance tools. The company says it will build premium fee-based versions with long-term archives along with other features.

Xpenser competes directly with Expensify (see note 2), a company that will be demo'ing at our upcoming FinovateStartup conference.

Data entry via the browser search box
Although, it's not a core piece of the program, I was perplexed when I saw that one of the methods of entering expense data into your Xpenser account was through the "search box." That was probably what convinced me to sign up for the account.

Here's how it works in Firefox (also works in IE 7+ and any browser that supports OpenSearch):

• Navigate to the Xpenser website
• Click on the drop-down area next to the browser search box
• Add Xpenser as a "search engine"
• Then simply type the expense amount and description in the search box making sure that Xpenser is the selected as search engine (see second screenshot below), and press enter; Xpenser recognizes your account through cookies and adds the "search term" to your data file

That feature is so clever, it's almost creepy. I'm not sure a bank would want to use this feature since it could capture any search term the user inadvertently input while the bank's "search engine" was selected in the browser search box. 

Xpenser main account page (30 March 2009)

Input via the browser search box (30 March 2009)

Notes:
1. Not to be confused with FinovateStartup alum, Expensr, now part of Strands.

2. Expensify has abandoned the decoupled debit business model it was using when we wrote about it's launch last fall (previous post).  It now offers the choice of a prepaid MasterCard or an American Express-issued card.

3. For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features for Online Banking and our Online Banking Report on Social Personal Finance. 

Today, Wesabe (company blog post) joined Geezeo (press release) in officially pursuing a strategy of white-labeling its personal finance services for banks and credit unions (note 1). Wesabe CEO Marc Hedlund told me they have three deals in various stages of the contract process, but none have signed on the dotted line yet.

You can get an idea of how this will play out by visiting Wesabe's first co-branded site at the UK's Daily Telegraph (see screenshot below). However, in the banking rollout, the service can truly be white labeled with no mention of the Wesabe name. Wesabe provided a mockup of its white-label product for the fictitious Springboard Bank (see second screenshot below).

As much as I love online PFM sites, the future for most financial management activity is within the confines of online banking sites (note 2). Why? Most people do NOT enjoy tagging purchases, tracking their budget, monitoring their net worth in real-time, or debating the latte factor.

Banking, like most chores, needs to be accomplished as efficiently as possible. And the easiest way to track financial activity is at the place the customer already knows, trusts, and uses, their online banking site (note 3). 

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for Mint, Quicken and other PFM sites. Millions of consumers and small businesses pay close attention to every transaction. And they'll invest time, and money, into standalone sites that offer state-of-the art tools and independent perspectives.    

But by partnering with full-featured PFMs like Wesabe, banks and credit unions give customers little reason to look elsewhere. Wesabe is particularly well-suited for the role of financial institution service provider (note 4):

• Technology: It owns the aggregation engine, so they have more flexibility in pricing and contract negotiations
• API: Wesabe has featured a public API since 2007, so it's easier for bank developers to hook into its rich dataset
• Features: Has state-of-the-art user interface including a Twitter interface, widgets for Mac and Windows Vista, an iPhone-optimized site, and soon an iPhone app
• Brand: It has taken the high road....positioning the Wesabe brand as an unbiased financial guide; in fact, they've never taken advertising or commissions from financial providers
• Experience: Launching in 2006, they have been around longer than most other players, giving them credibility and a better longitudinal database
• Traffic: Of independent PFM sites (see Jan. traffic here), Wesabe trails only Mint and Geezeo in monthly traffic (120,000 unique visitors in Feb according to Compete), so it brings an established community and financial database to their financial institution clients

Make vs. buy
For a financial institution, the advantage of working with Wesabe vs. building PFM capabilities in-house include:

• Speed to market: Outsourcing allows FIs to get the PFM features in to the market much faster; depending on level of integration, could launch in a few months
• Integration: Although young, Wesabe is an experienced aggregator and technology company; this expertise can be tapped to provide integrate bill payment and funds transfer capabilities
• Existing community: FIs can leverage the vibrant Wesabe community to instantly provide interesting content and community
• Cost savings: Gives the financial institution state-of-the-art features much faster, and usually at a lower cost, than building them in-house

Wesabe's co-branded site at UK's Daily Telegraph (link) (18 March 2009)

Wesabe mock-up of white-labeled PFM interface (18 March 2009)

Notes:
1. Wesabe's new service is called Springboard and Geezeo's is Spectrum.
2. Assuming banks and credit unions offer a reasonable set of personal finance management tools.
3. For more info, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features for Online Banking and Online Banking Report on Social Personal Finance.
4. Geezeo also boasts similar benefits; while it's a year younger and doesn't own the aggregation engine, its provider, CashEdge is already used and trusted by many large financial institutions, and Geezeo boasts higher traffic than Wesabe. 
5. Come talk to Wesabe's execs at our FinovateStartup 2009 conference, April 28 in San Francisco.

I love personal financial management websites. Not so much for the reality, actually I hate tracking expenses, but for the promise. The illusion of having everything under control, never overdrafting, never missing a payment, and with perfectly-shaded multi-color pie charts just a click away (inset from Mint). 

But I've always thought that once banks and credit unions added basic PFM functions to their online banking services (see note 1), it's game-over for most independent PFM sites. They would have to either license their platform to financial institutions, sell out, or close their doors.

Now I'm not so sure.

Mint did something recently that made me reconsider. It was really pretty simple when you think about it. Yet as far as I know, no bank, card issuer, or even credit union has ever taken this on. 

The Mountain View, CA-based startup scanned their members' credit card statements to identify bogus charges from a known scam. And the company plans to make the resulting fraud alert service a standard part of its offering.  

From American Banker (23 Jan 2009):

Mint Software Inc. is planning to roll out a tool that will automatically scan its 800,000 users' accounts for potentially bogus charges....Aaron Patzer, Mint's founder and chief executive, said the idea for the new product came after his company heard of a scam involving Adele Services of Melville, N.Y., a bogus merchant that was making 25-cent charges to millions of consumer accounts. The news was widely reported, and Mint decided to check its users' accounts its to see if any had been affected; it found 800 that were.

Score 1 for the upstarts.

Bottom line: If the online PFM purveyors harness technology to take better care of banking customers than the banks themselves, especially with practical, money-saving ways such as Wesabe's Cutback Tool (below), the newcomers have a bright future indeed.

Note: For more info, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features for Online Banking.

We've regularly cited third-party estimates of website traffic to Mint and other PFMs. More often that not, we'll get a comment or email taking us to task for using such inexact and/or irrelevant data. But we believe that website traffic, even a rough approximation, is a leading indicator of success. 

Luckily, we now have better metrics for the two online leaders. In response to what appears to be a truth-in-advertising query from Intuit's general counsel (see note 1), Mint disclosed its registered-user count (note 2), which has been growing at an average of 17% per month in Q4 2008 and so far in this year. 

As of yesterday, Mint had 934,000 users, double third quarter's end-count. That's 3,400 new registered users per day (seven days a week), almost 25,000 per week. The company should pass one million before St. Patrick's day.

While this growth in registered users is impressive, what's truly astonishing is that 70% of the registered users, 680,000 so far, have entered at least one bank or credit card username/password in order to automatically download transactions into Mint.

In response to Mint's disclosure, Quicken Online reported its 650,000 registered users, currently growing at a 45,000-per-week clip. If that continues, they'll pass one million before the April tax deadline.

It looks like there's quite a battle shaping up between the two leading online personal finance specialists. And don't overlook the banks. Both Bank of America (2.5 mil as of April 2008) and Wells Fargo (1 mil as of Nov 2008) have more online personal finance users at this point.

What it means: Account aggregation, left for dead a few years ago, is making a fearsome comeback. The three biggest players, Bank of America, Mint, and Quicken Online, now have more than 4 million registered users, approximately 4% of all U.S. banking households (note 3).

Table: Mint Registered Users by Month

Source: Mint, Feb. 2009
*Registered users are anyone who has signed up with email address
** Through Jan 25 (per Mint letter, 28 Jan)
***Through Feb 19 (per TechCrunch post, 19 Feb)

Notes:
1. Intuit's letter to Mint here.
2. Mint's response here.
3. Yodlee provides the aggregation engine for both Bank of America and Mint.
4. For more info, see our Online Banking Report on Account Aggregation and Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features

January is always a great month for personal finance. Consumers working off holiday spending binges and/or attempting to live up to New Years resolutions naturally find their way to personal financial management sites. It's especially pronounced this year as consumers try to better understand their spending and manage for the downturn.

So it's not surprising to see that traffic grew by 300,000 unique visitors in January (+20%) compared to December. Total traffic was up 4.5-fold at sites open for a year or more (see Table 1). Including the class of 2008, total traffic was 2.0 million, a five-fold increase from a year ago.

Highlights:

• Mint had another great month, increasing site visitors by about 200,000, a five-fold increase in the past year. Mint's gain in January was more than that total traffic of all nine 2008 newcomers combined. Mint had a 60% market share of the total of 1.8 million visitors in the category, about the same as December. 
• Geezeo continued its wicked pace, growing 30% during the month, and posting a 12-fold increase over a year ago.
• Quicken Online, which launched in January 2008, more than doubled visitors to 150,000 compared to December. However, traffic at Quicken is hard to compare to other sites due to the massive traffic at its parent site: for example, <quicken.intuit.com> received 1.2 million visitors and <intuit.com> website had more than 10 million. 
• Wesabe was the only site, of those open for a year or more, that turned in a traffic decline, falling more than 30% in the month. However, keep in mind the Compete estimates are derived from an online panel and are not always accurate, especially for sites in the low six-figures or less. The company said that it had record page views in January. That includes both U.S. traffic, measured by Compete, and international visitors.
• BudgetTracker also turned in amazing results, nearly doubling its traffic to an estimated 27,000 visitors.
• Of the 2008 startups (see Table 2), Thrive was the only one showing strong growth, increasing 50% over the previous month. On Friday the company was acquired by Lending Tree for an undisclosed amount.

Table 1: Traffic at online PFMs launched more than one year ago

Table 2: Traffic at the online PFM class of 2008

Source: Compete, 7 Feb. 2009; estimates of monthly unique visitors from the United States

*The percent changes were calculated from the underlying data set and due to rounding of the monthly traffic figures; the percentages may look slightly off

Note: For more information on the market, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features and Online Banking Report on Social Personal Finance.

As I was publishing my earlier post on the Thanksgiving message on the Zions Bank homepage, I noticed a small Holiday Gift Planner banner in the lower left corner (see inset below). Expecting to find a pitch for Visa or MasterCard gift cards, I clicked on it and was surprised to find a very cool holiday microsite called at MyHolidayGiftPlanners.com (see screenshot 1 below and note 1).

The gift planner is a personal financial management tool for planning, budgeting, and tracking holiday gift expenditures. Users create a gift list for each person by entering a budget amount per person, an estimated cost for each planned gift, and then later the actual amount spent.

The tool does all the math, tracking progress against each recipients' gift list and how the total holiday budget is faring (see screenshot 2). It even includes a space for capturing gift-buying notes (see below). This year's list will be archived to provide a handy reference for next year. Hopefully, the bank will use email to draw users back next year.

Consumers could do the same thing on a spreadsheet or within most personal finance programs. However, Zions has built an elegant solution that is faster and more convenient. I've always done this for my kids on a piece of paper which I inevitably lose and/or leave out on the table where anyone can read it. I look forward to keeping this list bookmarked and password-protected on my computer this year. 

Anyone can use the program, you needn't be a Zions customers. It takes seconds to sign up inputting name, email address and password (see screenshot 3). The site gently cross sells credit cards to pay for itself. There's a banner that runs across the top of the planning page (screenshot 2) and a link to special cardholder discounts on the main page (screenshot 4).

Zions should turn the planner into an iPhone/Android app to help users track gift purchases on the go and avoid the need to print the list prior to the trip to the mall.

Bottom line: The Zions gift planner is a great example of how to creatively use branded financial management tools to both help customers and create synergy with banking products. We're giving Zions our sixth OBR Best of the Web 2008 award for creating a simple solution to help customers avoid holiday overspending, a pesky personal finance issue that is top-of-mind this year. 

1. Homepage of Zions Bank's gift planner (28 Nov 2008)

2. A credit card cross sell runs across the top of my personalized gift planner

3. Email address is captured for future marketing purposes

4. Credit card discounts are displayed along with an credit card application

Note:

1. Evidently the planner was available in early December last year. The first blog mention was 7 Dec 2007.

In April, we reported on the robust adoption of Bank of America's online personal finance manager, My Portfolio (see note 1), used by 10% of the bank's 25 million online bankers. The results are especially impressive given that it's a full-featured module accessible via online banking, but not particularly well integrated.

In comparison, Wells Fargo offers a completely integrated PFM tool, My Spending Report, that's extremely simple to use, but offers limited functionality. On Oct. 29, the bank made an important improvement, adding a basic budgeting tool, Budget Watch, to what had been essentially a list of transactions divided by category.

The bank told me last week they have 1 million monthly users, making it the second online PFM provider to break the 1-million mark (after BofA). Wells has about 15% of its online banking base (note 2) using the tool, a slightly higher penetration than BofA. Again, not surprising considering how well it is integrated. The budget tools should boost penetration.

Who'll be the next one to join the 1-million club? Mint, with about 500,000 users in its first 15 months in business, is headed that way, possibly as early as late next year.  Chase/WaMu could get there in a few weeks, if they added online personal finance to their feature set. Quicken Online, now that it's free, should get there relatively quickly as well.

Note:
1. BofA's My Portfolio is powered by Yodlee.

2. Excluding Wachovia accounts.

As I was drilling into the latest Compete traffic numbers for the annual Online Banking Report planning issue, I noticed a significant uptick in traffic to online personal finance specialists, almost across the board.

Sept. traffic revealed a total of 1.2 million unique visitors (note 1) compared to less than 400,000 a year ago. Not surprisingly, consumers appear to be taking a closer look at their finances. 

The big three newcomers last year: Mint, Wesabe, and Geezeo saw combined traffic increase by 450,000 users, a nearly three-fold increase from 2007. Geezeo was the star percentage-wise, growing more than six-fold. But Mint accounted for three-fourths of the net gain across the existing players with 330,000 more visitors (see Table 1 below):

Also, two newcomers made a big splash last month:

• PNC Virtual Wallet launched in July (coverage here) by PNC Bank, which trailed only Mint last month with nearly 140,000 unique visitors (see 2 below).
• Rudder (a relaunch of Spendview) drew 50,000 visitors last month after its launch at DEMOfall in early Sept.

Granted, the PNC Virtual Wallet benefits enormously from the 2 million monthly visitors to parent PNC.com and PNCBank.com. Yet, it's still an impressive total and is encouraging for banks and credit unions considering similar efforts.

Table 1: Online PFMs launched more than 1 year ago

Table 2: The online PFM class of 2008

 Notes:

1. Sum of the monthly unique visitors from all PFM companies, visitors that went to more than one PFM provider are not eliminated from the total, so there is double counting in the totals. Data source is Compete, pulled 21 Oct 2008.

2. Rudder was previously Spendview, but we consider them to be essentially a new company.

Drum roll, please. Our final presenter today is Peter Pham, CEO of BillShrink.

Menlo Park, CA-based BillShrink launched its new service in July.

The service is designed to help consumers find the best deal in various categories. Today they showed the credit card selector. The service provides detailed breakdowns of fees and rewards to allow consumers to compare across more than 200 cards in the market.

Launching today is MyAccounts which allows users to track their accounts more easily.

BillShrink also tracks wireless carriers and allows users to find the best mobile phone deals.  

BillShrink announced an $8 million dollar funding today.

The second-to-last presenter today is Thrive from Loudwater Labs. CEO Avi Karnani will be conducting the demo.

New York City-based Thrive is the latest entry in the online personal finance market.

What's New
Thrive is making its official debut today at Finovate. They use a red light/green light system so it's easy to see what needs attention quickly.

Thrive calculates a financial health score from the user's data. Then Thrive shows users specifically how they can improve their score. The recommendations show financial institution products that can be used to achieve cost savings (i.e., product placements such as Mint).

On average they are recommending $1500 worth of savings for users.

Thrive has a wizard to help you see how much house you can afford.

Thrive today is announcing a partnership with Credit.com to allow users to track their credit score over time and improve it.

Mint CEO & Founder Aaron Patzer will be presenting next. 

Online personal finance provider Mint launched a year ago and won a Best of Show award at our first Finovate conference in 2007.

What's new
Mint moves out of beta today, with 500,000 users. Their sign-up rate has more than doubled in the past 3 weeks.

Today they launched new investment tracking functionality that allows Mint users to track their accounts at more than 1000 investment companies, mutual funds, and retirement services.

A unique aspect of its investment tracking is the ability to see the value of the account vs. the cost basis.

Mint has an IRA Rollover Advisor where they are partnering with Fidelity, Scottrade, E*Trade, and Schwab.

Results: 10% of users have changed investment behavior and 50% of users have changed their spending behavior by using Mint.

I'm certain most major PFM providers will have an iPhone app within the next six to 12 months. It's a valuable product extension from a functionality standpoint (see note 1). Even more important are the marketing benefits from blogger/press coverage and the App Store listing itself. 

Mint posted a blog entry last week reviewing ten iPhone finance apps. The post drew two dozen comments, most asking when a Mint app would be released for the iPhone. Mint Product VP Aaron Forth replied, "We are busy working on one now."

Most of the better-funded PFM companies are likely working on an iPhone app, but the approval process at Apple can easily take a month or more (one developer's story is chronicled here). So we expect to see them trickle out over the coming months.

The first established online PFM to make it into the iPhone App Store is Moneytrakin', the Barcelona, Spain-based multi-language, multi-currency PFM (note 2). We covered its launch more than two years ago (here).

The company recently announced it had surpassed 5 million transactions tracked. Assuming 250 per customer, that's 20,000 active users. According to Compete, U.S. website traffic averages 1,000 to 2,000 per month. But many (most?) of Moneytrackin's customers are outside the United States.

The Moneytrackin' program, released on Sept. 19, is currently the seventh most popular app in the Finance category.

Notes:
1. For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

2. There are at least a dozen check registers and mini PFMs in the App Store, but none are from established online PFM providers. The only exception is iBuxfer, which claims to work with Buxfer using its API, but was not developed by the company. And in fact, according to the comments in the App Store, may be violating Buxfer's terms of service. All the more reason to get your own app into the store before someone else does.

What a month for financial tech startups! Partly due to DEMOfall, TechCrunch50 and our Finovate, there's been at least 10 online financial service launches or unveilings this month in North America alone (note 1).

That could be the sign of a bubble about to burst, or it could just be a bunch of smart people meeting very real market needs. Only time will tell. 

Lucky number 10 is Pennyminder, an online personal finance startup based in Vancouver, BC. I met founder Vince Hodges at BarCampBankBC last Saturday (coverage here). Although Pennyminder joins a crowded field, the seventh personal finance manager (list below) to launch this month, it's the first ever based out of Canada. That alone should help it gain some traction.

Vince proffered a beta invite, so I've had a chance to look at it. It's a nice, clean design that allows user entries/statement import and supports an expense sharing/social angle. I don't know if that's enough to compete with the dozens of U.S. and international personal finance sites, many with VCs funding a wider range of features, but it's a good start.

Pennyminder will have to figure out a way to break through the clutter, such as partnering with credit unions and/or banks.

Here are six more newcomers this month:

• Thrive unveiled here yesterday and launching at Finovate NYC on Oct. 14
• Rate Surfer unveiled at the TechCrunch50 DemoPit on Sept. 9 and launching at Finovate NYC, Oct. 14 (our coverage here)
• iThryv from Shryk unveiled on stage at TechCrunch50 on Sept. 8 and covered here that day
• Expensify unveiled at the TechCrunch50 DemoPit on Sept. 8 (our coverage here)
• Rudder unveiled here Aug. 23 and launched at DEMOfall on Sept. 8
• GreenSherpa unveiled here July 18 and launched at DEMOfall on Sept. 8

Note:
1. Includes the seven mentioned here plus three more I've yet to blog about.

With three weeks remaining before Finovate NYC, the final company in the demo lineup is stepping out of stealth mode and announcing its participation in our second annual new-products conference. See the full list here.

Thrive will be launching its entry in the online personal finance marketplace, JustThrive.com, at Finovate on Oct. 14. The company hopes to differentiate itself with more advanced financial planning tools while still remaining free. Founder and CEO is Avi Karnani; Marc Matsumoto is CMO.  

Currently, the service is in closed beta testing, but Thrive recently updated its homepage with a timely message playing off last week's financial debacle (screenshot below). 

We had a chance to meet with the NYC-based founders earlier this year and were impressed how they'd studied the current players and were aiming to leapfrog the competition. However, there's been significant innovation in the space this year, and they enter a crowded field (more on that tomorrow).

At this point, I can't say anything more specific about Thrive's plans, but after it becomes publicly available we'll be back with a full analysis. 

Like Rate Surfer, which we wrote about yesterday, Expensify launched its new employee expense-management system from the TechCrunch50 DemoPit this week.

The San Francisco-based startup (note 1) combines a payment card with a Web-based expense manager and uses cellphone cameras to upload pictures of receipts to match against purchases. It's a banking triple play: card, online, and mobile.

The target market is smaller businesses that want to automate expense report preparation, approval, and reimbursement to their employees.  

How it works
The heart of Expensify is a prepaid, decoupled credit card. I know that doesn't make sense, but here's how it works: 

1. Sign up for an Expensify MasterCard prepaid debit card.
2. Load it with value from any credit or debit card, Visa, MasterCard, or American Express. 
3. Make purchases with the Expensify MasterCard.
4. As each purchase clears, the prepaid balance is lowered, triggering an automatic "top off" charge of an equal amount to the consumer's credit card, thereby returning the prepaid balance back to the original level.

Metabank is the issuer; here are terms and conditions.

Analysis
At first blush Expensify sounds pretty amazing. An expense management card that rides on top of your regular card, with mobile and Web-based integration. Brilliant, until you start thinking about costs. There's that pesky thing called interchange. What Expensify has done is create two card transactions instead of one, doubling the amount of interchange paid.

To cover the extra interchange and create some revenue for itself, Expensify levies a 3% transaction fee on the cardholder. Although the card is otherwise relatively fee-free, that's a significant surcharge.

Why would anyone pay 3% extra in order to use the Expensify card when they already have a credit card? The company believes that small businesses will pay the fee in order to get the expense-manager features and to help employees separate business expenses from personal ones. Businesses could have multiple Expensify cards tied to different categories of expenses (see screenshot below).

A business with just $1000/mo in expenditures would pay $360 per year. In addition, the business would tie up several hundred dollars in a prepaid account, because the only charges cardholders can make must not exceed the prepaid balance held in the Expensify account. 

I think the expense-management concept is good, especially with the mobile receipt integration, but it's just too expensive in its current format. The founders should try to move to an ACH-based "topping off" process and remove the transaction fees. 

But regardless of how this specific product performs, the integration of payments, online and mobile, is a huge trend. If Expensify is nimble enough, they may be able to ride the wave.

Expensify homepage (10 Sep 2008)

Note:
1. Since I didn't see contact info on their website, here's what the founders provided at TechCrunch50: Expensify, 548 Market St. #61434, San Francisco, CA 94104, Phone: 801.745.9064

Two huge tech conferences opened today in California with 124 companies launching new products this week in front of a combined audience of more than 2,500 (see note 1). At DEMOfall in San Diego, 72 companies are launching new products today and tomorrow. In San Francisco, 52 companies launch at TechCrunch50 today through Wednesday.

Eight of the 124 companies are related to financial services:

• DEMOfall: Rudder, GreenSherpa, BizEquity (Advanta)
• Techcrunch50: iThryv (below), StockMood, PersonalRIA, exchangeP, and Emerginvest

We'll cover several of these companies, plus several in the TechCrunch50 DemoPit, starting with iThryv.

iThryv kicks of TechCrunch50
I made it down from Seattle this morning just in time to catch the first demo. I'm glad I got up early because it just so happened to be the only personal finance/banking-related finalist. Oklahoma City-based Shryk kicked off TechCrunch50 (note 2) by unveiling its online banking platform aimed at the 12- to 20-year-old crowd. The new service is called iThryv and it will be marketed directly to banks and credit unions who will customize and brand it for their own customer base.

iThryv will be integrated directly to the bank, or its core processor, so that real-time banking data can be displayed in various widgets. In addition to account info, iThryv also includes the following modules and features:

• Goal-oriented savings, including rewards for reaching milestones
• A spending & savings score that does for savings what a credit score does for loans
• Make $ area where budding entrepreneurs can learn more about starting a business
• Learn area for financial education

The company has a two-fold approach to getting iThryv into the market:

• Licensing the platform to banks for a fixed fee plus per-user fees
• Giving the platform to schools to incorporate into their curriculum

According to the founders, the service is currently being considered by several financial institutions, but it is not yet available online.

iThryv homepage (8 Sep 2008)

 iThryv savings score graphed (8 Sep 2008)

iThryv "Make $" tab (8 Sep 2008)

Notes:
1. TechCrunch reported approximately 1,700 attendees; DEMOfall, 800.

2. iThryv was originally scheduled to present third, but were moved up to first when Ashton Kutcher was late for his scheduled demo of his startup, Blah Girls.

Intuit joined the messaging race with the beta release of Quicken Beam. The free service sends users text-messaged balance-and-activity alerts from most U.S. bank, credit card, and credit union accounts. Users may also query the service for balance plus last five transactions by texting "Bal" to the short code 636363.

Currently, the service runs independently of Quicken and can be used by anyone free of charge. According to the official press release, the service was developed in Intuit Labs.

What's innovative
It's not a new feature. Quicken Online (see second screenshot below), along with most major banks and personal finance specialists (Mint, Rudder, Wesabe), already supports text-message alerts (see note 1). But this is a relatively low-cost way to hook users early on with an extremely simple service, then migrate them to more robust Intuit services later on (Quicken, QuickBooks, TurboTax).

And the Quicken stamp of approval means a lot when turning over your log-in credentials to a third party. If you want to talk to the company about Quicken Beam, Intuit will be demo'ing the latest features of Quicken Online at our Finovate Conference in October. 

Financial institutions that lack text-message support might consider linking customers to Quicken Beam. Yes, you are turning customers over to another financial provider, and yes, your compliance folks will hate it. But customers are going to do it whether you want them to or not. You might as well get credit for making a solid recommendation. And realistically, using Quicken Beam is unlikely to hasten anyone's exit from your bank or credit union.

Qucken Beam homepage (25 Aug 2008) 

 Text messaging in Quicken Online (25 Aug 2008)

Notes:
1. Geezeo really differentiated itself with mobile capabilities in its May 2007 launch. 

2. For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

There's a new challenger in the online PFM space, aptly named start-up Rudder which is headquartered in Houston, TX (see note 1). The company was founded in 2007 and launched last year under the name SpendView (note 2).   The company raised $2 million in January from Meakem Becker Venture Capital. The founder is Nikhil Roy. 

What's innovative
While it's a bit busy for my tastes, Rudder's homepage is aesthetically pleasing, and more importantly, lays out a number of remarkable benefits that every financial institution should be able to deliver on:

• Finances in your inbox: emphasizes that it's pushing info to you, not relying on your obsessive monitoring of a website
• Paying bills on time: They don't just help you pay the bills; Rudder makes sure you pay them ON TIME, a huge difference in terms of consumer benefits
• Think forward: Everyone has a sense of what they really have in the bank after upcoming expenses are met, but Rudder actually does the math for you and shows you what's truly "free cash" in your account after accounting for upcoming payments
• Every morning: Rudder provides a personal-finance heads-up each morning so you can go about your day without thinking about your finances
• Safe & secure: Self-explanatory, but cannot be overlooked

Clearly, Rudder has been studying how Mint grabbed an early following with great design, advanced functionality, and a brash point of view. However, it won't be able repeat Mint's PR coup last year of winning at TechCrunch40 and our Finovate 2007 (see note 4). Rudder has scheduled its public debut at competing techfest, Demo Fall, running Sept. 7-9 and unfortunately were not on our radar screen until after the Finovate 2008 lineup was set (note 5).

What it means
You gotta love Web-based startups. It took a decade for Wells Fargo to move from delivering plain old statement info on its website to offering rudimentary personal finance functionality in My Spending Report.

But less than two years after Wesabe (note 2) kicked off the Personal Finance 2.0 era, we have dozens of cool personal finance companies looking to make a name for themselves. Mint (note 2) is the most hyped (see coverage), but there are also great things going on at Geezeo, Jwaala (note 3), Buxfer, ClearCheckbook, Mvelopes, and, of course, Quicken Online, which has Coke-like brand awareness.

And don't rule out the incumbent financial institutions. PNC Bank (post here) and Frost Bank (post here) have both introduced novel accounts that incorporate advanced personal finance functions. And Bank of America has offered full-service PFM functions since late 2006 with Yodlee-powered MyPortfolio.   

Rudder homepage with five key benefits highlighted (21 Aug 2008)

Your "real" balance widget
I love the focus on what you really have in your account, after netting out all the known bills in the coming month. Here's the graphical feedback Rudder provides.

Notes:
1. Rudder seems like a good name for a financial management app. What do you think Jeffry?

2. The previous version, SpendView, is still live at <spendview.org>, but the original spendview.com now redirects to rudder.com.

3. See Wesabe and Mint demo their latest features at the upcoming Finovate 2008. Mint won Best of Show at Finovate 2007.

4. Jwaala was Best of Show winner at Finovate Startup, April 2008.

5. Attention startups: It's never too early to make an introduction and get on our Finovate watch list. We're already putting notes together for 2009. Contact Online Banking Report/Netbanker editor Jim Bruene. 

6. For more info on the space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance

According to TechCrunch, the $0.99 tip calculator app from TapTapTap has been downloaded 3,200 times in the month it's been available. Net income to the developer, after Apple takes its 30% cut, is $2,200.

TapTapTap also markets a much more sophisticated location-based search tool that has generated $50,000 in revenues for the developer.

Tipulator is ranked number 20 in our Aug. 5 rundown of the top-20 banking and finance apps. Today it ranked number 27.

Apple ranks the most popular apps within each category, but does not provide download totals. Tipulator numbers were provided by developer.

What it means
1. iPhone users, so far, are willing to pay for apps. Who would have thought that more than 3,000 people would go to the trouble to download an app to help them multiply their bill times 15% to 20%? And there are two tip calculators that ranked higher in the App Store.

2. There is real demand for mobile financial tools, even very simple ones. Financial institutions should consider launching a branded calculator app in the Apple App Store.

Wesabe's latest feature, the ability to update your account via Twitter, isn't likely to find too many users in the short-term. However, it's a great marketing move that could see a fair amount of uptake over time (see note 1).

Although there are less than 2 million Twitter users, the company is currently white hot, one of the most talked about Internet companies (see Google trends below, which shows Twitter search volume is 7x or 8x that of "phishing"). So why not draft off Twitter's hype, as long as it's not too costly?

How it works
After logging in to Wesabe and providing your Twitter name, you then simply send a private or public message (aka Tweets) to Wesabe's Twitter account. Wesabe then adds the expense to your cash-tracking account. You can include merchant name, expense categories, and descriptions to the transaction (see examples below).

Most common: Update via private message (no one else will see)

Less likely: Update via public message (your friends will receive it, and if you have an open feed, anyone could see it)

Google Trends for Twitter vs. phishing (9 Aug 2008)

Note:
1. Updating accounts via text message and email has much wider appeal. It's one of the recommended items in our personal finance feature set. See our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features for more info.

According to Compete, website traffic to personal-finance startup Mint increased to 460,000 in July compared to 400,000 the month before, for a 13% increase. Site traffic has quadrupled since December, gaining 350,000 unique monthly visitors.

After a solid decade ignoring the financial management features of online banking (see note 1), we now have two banks doing very interesting things melding transaction accounts with personal financial management.

Frost Bank is the latest visionary, launching its Momentum Account this week (press release). The account melds high-yield checking, goal-oriented savings, and financial management into one online offering. Unlike PNC Bank's VirtualWallet, which is clearly aimed at the youth market (see previous coverage), Momentum goes directly to the online sweet spot, 30- and 40-somethings trying to manage their money in a more systematic way.

The account
Basically, it's a fee-free, interest-bearing checking account with the usual freebies: debit card, online banking, bill pay. After the first three months, balances of $15,000+ earn 3% and those under $15,000 earn basically zero. However, the bank has added an interesting twist they call "DIY APY (see screenshot below). For every 10 monthly debit card transactions, they add 5 basis points to the interest rate, up to a maximum gain of 0.25% (for 50 debit card transactions).

That's a piddling amount, earning about a buck a month (pre-tax) for someone with $25,000 in the account typically doing 10 to 19 debit card transactions monthly. Yet most consumers like the feeling of winning the rewards game, so it should be good for marketing and retention.

Like PNC's VirtualWallet, online account opening is powered by Andera.

The innovations
Besides the DIY APY gimmick, the new account is noteworthy because it incorporates goal-oriented savings and transaction tracking into the interface. Users can allocate funds to one or more savings goals and set up automated transfers to the savings sub-accounts.

The interface also includes budget-categorization features using the folders metaphor. And the usual charting and graphing functions are available. Unfortunately, there is no online demo, so I could see only the features in the bank's demo video. 

Is it trendworthy?
I'm not ready to say that two examples make a trend, but given all the interest by investors and the press in online personal finance, I think this is the beginning of an interesting period in online finance product development.

Frost Bank homepage announces "DIY APY" (30 July 2008)

Note:
1. See Online Banking Report: Personal Finance Features for Online Banking for more information on the pros and cons of various personal finance features.

I came across Green Sherpa in a Web search a few weeks ago. The Santa Barbara, CA-based startup is planning a Sept. 8 launch. The homepage (shown below) is not currently functional. All links point to a page where users can sign up for more info to be delivered at a later date. 

The tagline, "A more efficient way to track your personal finances," is intriguing (note 1), but no word on how Green Sherpa will differentiate itself from Mint, Jwaala, Wesabe and the rest. But the name is wonderful.  

Note:
1. This tagline, visible on its placeholder site in early July, has since been replaced with "Sophisticated cash flow management that's simple to use." 

Just when you thought Mint, Wesabe, and Geezeo had a lock on all the headlines for Gen Y personal finance, along comes a truly inspired effort from a major U.S. retail bank. Furthermore, it's not from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, or even ING Direct.

Pittsburgh, PA-based PNC Bank, the 15th-largest U.S. retail bank with $83 billion in deposits (see note 1), today launched a new online combo account called PNC Virtual Wallet.

The account comes with a checking account, bill payment, and two types of savings accounts. It also features several unique personal financial management features with an emphasis on functions most likely to appeal to a 20-something audience:

• Cash flow: debit card, checking, online bill pay, financial calendar, recent transaction report
• Savings: two types of savings accounts, automated savings options, wish list, and a random video-game-inspired savings tool called "punch the pig" (see below)

Finally, the account is priced well:

• No fees (except $0.50 per written check after the first 3 per month and the usual penalty fees)
• Free overdraft protection among linked accounts
• 3% APY on the growth savings component
• ATM-free rebate (but only if there's a $2000 average monthly balance in the checking account portion)

What's innovative? (note 2)

• Package of three deposit accounts: Spend Account (e.g., checking), Reserve Account (e.g., savings) and Growth Account (e.g., high-yield savings or money market deposit account)
• Ability to move money among the three accounts by moving a slider across the screen, called the Money Bar
• Automated savings function called Savings Engine that allows users to set up time-triggered (e.g., once per week) or event-triggered (e.g., each debit card use) automatic savings transfers
• Savings game called Punch the Pig, a video-game-inspired savings gimmick: Each time the pig appears on screen, users can elect to "punch" it to automatically move money from checking to savings
• Wish List with savings goals and progress reports

What can be improved?
Four areas that are noticeably absent, or at least not mentioned:

• Mobile functionality, especially text banking and alerts
• Online customer support: Customer can apply online through the Andera-powered app; however, there is no link to any online-support options such as chat, IM, text, or even a Web-based input form or old-school email address
• Social aspects: forums, reviews, blogs, or even testimonials (note 4)
• Credit: credit cards, line of credit, auto loans, and so on

The website design is impressive and very un-banklike, yet it lacks some basics:

• No demo: There are several Flash instructional videos that show most of the key features, but there is no all-encompassing demo for users wanting a tryout before buying.
• Lame homepage videos: Granted, I'm not in the Gen Y target market so I could be wrong, but if I think the videos are lame, what do you think a 22-year-old will make of them? I say lose the "man on the street videos" or reshoot them in a less-scripted manner. 
• Extensive FAQs: The FAQs need to be expanded tenfold. Currently, only 16 questions and answers are up, but with so many unique features, that number doesn't come close to answering many basic questions, such as "Are there account alerts?" or "What's the rate of interest on the reserve account" (note 3), or "How long are transactions stored?"

PNC Bank virtual wallet homepage (14 July 2008)

Explanation of "Punch the Pig" savings feature

Notes:
1. Deposits as of 31 Dec 2007; deposits were up 25% compared to $66 billion as of year-end 2006.

2. PNC has applied for a patent on the account and tools.

3. Eventually, I did find a link to interest rates and fees on the "how to apply" page

4. See Online Banking Report on Social Personal Finance for more info

I've been reading the FiLife blog and monitoring its URL since I heard about the intriguing concept last summer. After a couple false starts, the site went live yesterday.

The unique joint effort between News Corp's Dow Jones and IAC is a cross between a personal finance tool like those powered by LeadFusion, a finance forum like FatWallet, a voting site such as Digg, and a full-blown magazine such as Money. It's dripping with Web 2.0 touches from the trendy design to blogging with attitude and harnessing the collective intelligence of the user base.

The core FI Deals area shown below allows users to self-assess their financial situations. In FiLife-speak, it shows how you stack up, in key areas such as income, home value, credit score, debt and even the value of your car. The people pyramid (in the screenshot below) shows an orange stick figure representing where you stand against the rest of the country.

Following a few ideas on how to improve your standing, FiLife presents financial deals in descending order of how valuable the FiLife community deems them. In this case, a mortgage offer from Citibank is listed first due to its top-of-the-line 5-point score. In this case, since it's the first day the site's been live, the score comes from a single review by a FiLife staffer. As the site gains users, this score would reflect the average across all reviewers.

The other key area is the FiDeals (screenshot below). Here users can search the top deals across all categories as voted on by the community. Some deals have been placed in the site via sponsorship dollars. Those are indicated by the gold pyramid. Blue pyramid offers have been added by staff members. In either case, the score shown within the colored pyramid reflects the vote of the community, which includes staff member votes.

First Impressions
The deep-pocketed owners have the resources to build traffic and establish the FiLife brand, if they find it profitable. Assuming it gets significant visitor traction, this could be the place to find financial and banking deals online, at least in the United States.

The business model is clearly ad-supported. There's nothing on the site at this point that would command subscription fees. And so far, the advertising is less intrusive than many other financial portals. And the bright look and good organization, not to mention professional personal finance content, add up to a potential winner.

But FiLife faces the same problem all ad-supported personal finance sites have: how to walk the fine line between the needs of users who want to find the best price vs. that of the advertisers that do not want to compete solely on price. FiLife sponsors may bolt if the community consistently posts poor reviews on their price-value. On the other hand, Google is dong just fine with AdWords, by ensuring that advertising is relevant. It will be interesting to see how FiLife strikes the proper balance.  

And it's no sure thing that FiLife ends up as the winner in the space. FiLife faces competition not only from startups such as SmartHippo, Wesabe, and Mint, but also from entrenched sites such as BankRate and TheStreet.com. And don't count out the incumbent personal finance magazines, including Dow Jones's own SmartMoney. These properties have enormous brand recognition and have already built substantial websites.

It was online banking week in Walt Mossberg's popular Wall Street Journal technology columns. Yesterday in The Mossberg Solution, authored by 20-something Katherine Boehret and edited by Mossberg, Mint's personal finance service received a half-page article so complimentary I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't an advertisement. Boehret couldn't find a single thing wrong with the service, although she did wish for bill payment capability so she could do all her banking with Mint. I'm sure she'll have her wish granted relatively soon.

In today's Personal Technology column entitled, How to Avoid Cons that Can Lead to Identify Theft, Mossberg himself dropped a bomb which will impact bank-marketing efforts for years to come. His first of seven tips for safe computing:

Never, ever click on a link embedded in an email (from your) financial institution....

That's harsh, but it's also understandable why he'd take that stand. Mossberg strives to make technology issues understandable to non-techie readers. However, it would have been better to add, "unless your bank adds account-specific personalization to the messages so you know for sure where they originated." 

Action items
Many financial institutions, including Citibank and Bank of America, have long used personalization to distinguish legitimate messages from phishing attempts. Financial institutions with good personalized messaging should consider a public outreach program to counter the negative perception from the Mossberg column. It also might be a good time to remind front-line employees how to respond to customer concerns about phishing emails.

For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Marketing Security. 

Two months ago we published a table (here) showing active users at the leading online personal finance startups. Below is the table, updated with March traffic and the addition of one more player: Bank of America.

The bank, which offers a full-featured online personal finance management solution called My Portfolio, powered by Yodlee, has 2.5 million active users, according to BofA exec Marina Moore (note 3). That's an impressive 10% of the bank's online user base, and about 6x the total user base of all the online startups combined (note 4). 

For more information:

• Online Banking Report (131/132): Personal Finance Features for Online Banking
• Online Banking Report (142/143): Social Personal Finance
• Our FinovateStartup Conference April 29 in San Francisco, where Buxfer, Expensr, Jwaala, Mint, and Wesabe will present the latest in online personal finance features

Notes/Sources:

1. Users: per BusinessWeek Online, Feb 2008, figures are reported by the companies and may include inactive users; Mint has been updated to 180,000 from 130,00 based on new figures reported in the Bank Technology News article published in April 2008

2. Traffic: per Compete estimates of website traffic for March 2008, retrieved April 21, 2008. Compete estimates traffic from its online data and can be off by a factor of two or three-fold for smaller websites.

3. As reported in a Bank Technology News article published in April 2008.

4. This table does not reflect all the players, such as Intuit's new Quicken Online, just the ones highlighted in the BusinessWeek article.

In a Feb. 11 BusinessWeek Online feature (here), reporter John Tozzi listed the self-reported user bases at seven new entrants in online personal finance. The roundup led with an anecdote about Wesabe CEO Jason Knight answering phone calls from users (see inset).

The seven companies listed below are only a subset of the online personal finance space. The list does not include users at Quicken Online, Yodlee, Mvelopes, and another two dozen smaller players. Nor does it include users at financial institutions that support online personal financial management such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Key Bank, River City Bank and others.

Sources: Users per BusinessWeek Online, Feb 2008, figures are reported by the companies and may include inactive users; Traffic: Compete, Inc, estimated unique visitors for January 2008

*Will be presenting at our FINOVATE Startup conference April 29, 2008

For more information:

• Previous NetBanker coverage here
• Online Banking Report #131/132: Personal Finance Features for Online Banking
• Online Banking Report #142/143: Social Personal Finance

Two years ago, computerized personal financial management was a two-horse race: Intuit's Quicken vs. Microsoft Money. Both full-featured. Both relatively easy to use. But both were packaged software apps, clearly not the future of consumer computing.

Fast forward to 2008: We now have two dozen startups, several banks, and other financial stalwarts, offering online personal finance of every size and shape (see Online Banking Report 142/143 and 131/132).

The latest entrant: Quicken Loans, which launched an open beta of Quizzle, an online budget and personal finance portal that features home values, mortgage advice, and free credit reports/scores from Experian (see note 1).

Quizzle also calculates what it calls your Quizzle score based on your credit score, home value, savings, debt, and household income/expenses (see second screenshot, below). Debt payments are imported from credit report data, but users can edit the information or add other items to improve the results.

Quizzle also provides home-value estimates calculated from public records, but in my case, it's no Zillow, and listed a home value that was significantly wrong (see note 1).  But it's simple to edit the number with your own estimate. Quicken Loans should consider tapping Zillow's API to provide a second opinion.

The sign-up process
Signup is simple with users providing name, address, birth date, email address, income, and home-purchase date. Email address is verified with a message that must be confirmed. Then identity is verified online using data pulled from the Experian credit bureau.

This is the same procedure used by every online credit-report provider with one huge exception. Quicken Loans DOES NOT REQUIRE A SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, a huge usability and privacy gain. The company is allowing credit-report access based on a name/address/birth date match. That's a welcome improvement for the user.

Analysis
There are a few rough edges in the tool. The home-equity portion is not well explained. In my example, my home value was shown to be about $50,000 more than the loan balance. However, in the equity portion of the tool, it showed that my home equity to be zero. Evidently, the site uses an 80% LTV criteria to calculate the amount of home equity available to lend against. While that's a perfectly reasonable assumption in today's credit environment, it should be spelled out in detail.

But overall, it's a great tool. The really free credit report and score alone are enough of a payback to gain consumer usage. The rest of the Quizzle score is less useful, but still interesting. And seeing it all in one place is fantastic. It will be interesting to see how Quicken Loans pulls me back to the site in the future.

Quizzle is off to a great start, and I look forward to seeing more companies, including banks, credit unions, and card issuers, integrate credit scores/reports into their online offerings (see note 2).

Overall scores:
    Look and feel (user interface) ==> A
    Credit information ==> A+
    Other tools ==> B
 

Quizzle home (18 Feb. 2008, prior to entering a ZIP code)

Overview pages showing the makeup of the overall Quizzle score
(upper right)

Note:

1. Quizzle uses a 900-point scale for credit scores, padding 50 points to everyone's score compared to Fair Isaac's FICO that tops out at 850. This makes you feel a little better about your score. No doubt, credit score inflation will continue, with someone using a 1,000-point scale in the near future. 

2. WaMu has provided free credit scores to credit card customers for several years.

The two dozen online competitors of Intuit's Quicken can breathe a sigh of relief today. The 800-lb guerilla has done them a favor, levying a monthly fee for its new online-only option, Quicken Online (press release here). While the $2.99/mo fee, after a free month, is reasonable, it's much different than FREE. Look for the websites of the competition to trumpet the $35.88 annual savings very soon.  

Intuit could easily have offered its online option free of charge. While that would cannibalize its packaged version, the overall impact to its bottom line would have been insignificant (note 2). And a free Quicken would have made it much harder for Mint, Wesabe, Geezeo, Buxfer and others to gain a footing (note 1).

My guess is that Intuit doesn't feel too threatened by the startups, yet. The security issue is extremely difficult for a new company to overcome. Intuit is one of the few tech companies with a brand that has trust levels on par with a financial institution. Millions already entrust their entire tax return, which has far more personal info than an online bank account, with the company. 

Intuit will allow the startups to build a following, then acquire the promising ones and convert their users to Quicken Online. All for less than the cash it would have foregone by offering Quicken Online free.  

We'll compare and contrast Quicken Online with the startups in an upcoming Online Banking Report (previous reports here and here).

Notes:

1. A few hours before Quicken Online went live, Mint issued a press release trumpeting its 100,000 registered users. That's an impressive number for a company that went live in September (previous coverage here). However, assuming 20% to 25% of those are active, there are still more than 500 times as many Quicken desktop users. 

2. Intuit's fiscal 2007 pre-tax profit was $670 million. 

Intuit has been beta testing a fully online version of its flagship product Quicken since September. According to Eileen Ambrose, writing for the The Baltimore Sun (here), the product will launch Jan. 8, 2008, at a price of $2.99/mo (note 1), $12 more than the entry-level, packaged version ($24 at Amazon), but $8 less than Quicken Deluxe ($44 at Amazon).   

Intuit is already advertising it on Google when searching "quicken online." Below is a screenshot of the landing page (here):

The service is still in beta and requires an "application" to use. Interestingly, one of the requirements listed in the FAQ is that beta testers must allow Intuit to download data from their bank account nightly. So obviously, account aggregation is a key component, not that that's a surprise. Automated account downloading is now "table stakes" for online personal finance.  

We'll look at the service in detail after we've had a chance to use it.

Note:

1. Intuit's ad on Google says (below), "Sign up for the new Quicken Online Free!" which sounds like a lot less than $36/yr.

We first discussed the usability advantage of direct-to-the-desktop information delivery in the 1998 Online Banking Report, Creating the Amazon.com of Financial Services  (see note 1). We called it a "meter" instead of today's widget or gadget, but its essential function was to show balance levels on the user's PC without requiring a login each time.

Last week, Wesabe became the first company to implement that concept with its Mac Widget shown below (Wesabe link here). The widget displays the balances in the various accounts tracked through the company's personal finance platform:

Several other personal finance companies have previously launched widgets including ClearCheckbook which released a Google Gadget on March 14 (here) and  Mac Widget a few days later (here). Other financial widgets are offered by billQ, Buxfer and Mortgagebot (see previous coverage here and here).

However, Wesabe is the only one streaming real-time balance updates thanks to its automated downloading of account data from linked financial accounts (aka account aggregation). Without the automatic updates, a widget is more window dressing than functional tool.  

Therefore, we're giving Wesabe its second OBR Best of the Web this year in recognition of its new widget which once again raises the bar for financial information delivery (note 2), if only for Mac users. 

Notes:

1. We last covered desktop technologies in a 2002 Online Banking Report, Grabbing Desktop Mindshare (# 85).

2. Recent OBR Best of the Web winners are covered here. Five awards have been handed out this year: two for Wesabe, and one each for Jwaala, Buxfer and Obopay. In the past 10 years, 67 companies have won Online Banking Report's Best of the Web awards. Only five companies prior to Wesabe have won the award twice: Bank of America, Citibank, E*Trade, Everbank, and Wells Fargo.

Joining the increasingly crowded online personal finance space is Banzai, the brainchild of Morgan Vandagriff (LinkedIn) who envisioned the system while working for a wealth management-advisory firm, SEI Investments.

Vandagriff, a 2002 Wharton biz school graduate, is positioning his firm as a financial assistant, not just a financial automation tool. Rather than sit back and let users put their finances on autopilot, Banzai induces them to spend 5 minutes every day tracking and categorizing their spending. And unlike Web 2.0 companies hoping to scale to millions of users with a handful of employees, Banzai assigns a personal coach to each user and actively encourages users to make contact.

How it works
Banzai uses "jars" as the metaphor for budget categories. Users establish jars for every bill, spending category, and income item. Transactions are uploaded from previously downloaded bank and credit card statements using a proprietary uploader similar to Wesabe's. Entries can also be made manually.

Banzai then forces users to take money for every transaction from one of the pre-established jars. It believes that it's important for users to "touch" every transaction to see how it impacts their pre-established spending plan. If a jar is empty, say groceries, then users must take money from another jar to cover the transaction. It helps users see the tradeoffs in spending. It's not a zero-sum game. Users can have their "reserve" jar go negative, signifying debt spending.

Take the company tour here.

The company
The four-person company is headquartered in Provo, UT, coincidentally just 10 miles from their most similar competitor Mvelopes, a personal finance site established in 2002 and run by Finicity (formerly In2M). The company has been in development mode since early this year. It is planning an official launch (to public beta) on Nov. 12, but anyone can sign up now at its website.

The company also competes with newer players, Wesabe, Mint, Buxfer, Jwaala and others and the big packaged-software players, Intuit's Quicken and Microsoft Money (note 1). Like its most-similar competitor, Banzai's business model calls for modest monthly or semi-annual fees; in this case, $4.95/mo or $29.70 for six months. The $30 fee includes a copy of a 120-page book, The Banzai Way.

First impressions
Banzai has a great logo, user-friendly layout, vibrant color and easy-to-read copy. The company has developed a good product tour, YouTube video, and blog - all the usual trappings of a Web startup, circa 2007. And the founder sounds very customer focused. It's unfortunate that a video game occupies the primary URL <banzai.com>. The company's  <banzaiway.com> address along with the unusual spelling, will make it somewhat harder to find.

I like what Banzai is doing, but I wonder, as I always do, how the company will attract users. Few people have the discipline to spend any time, let alone 5 minutes a day, managing their finances, and most of those already use Quicken or Money. And the $5/mo fee puts Banzai at a disadvantage compared to the free sites. 

However, Mvelopes has survived at double that rate, and if customers can be convinced it works, one caramel macchiato per month is not much to pay to keep your financial house in order. In fact, a site is somewhat more trustworthy when its business model is obvious, an important benefit in online finance. Finally, putting a a face on the product with a personal coach on call may help differentiate Banzai from the free sites. 

Screenshot: Transaction sorting

Screenshot: Jar setup wizard 

Note:

1. See our recent research on personal finance in Online Banking Report #142/143 and #131/132.

Mint has certainly caught the attention of the nation's press. Over the weekend, I watched CEO Aaron Patzer interviewed on San Francisco's channel 5 (video here). Today, the Wall Street Journal ran a Q&A with Patzer in the Lee Gomes Talking Tech column under the headline, Financial Software Moves to the Web (p. B3, see note 1). The WSJ article itself is a throwback to the late 1990s, talking about the advantages of Web-based apps vs. desktop apps. 

The Mint press coverage reminds me of the 2000/2001 period when Yodlee and Vertical One burst on the scene with "account aggregation" services. Mint wisely steers clear of that out-of-fashion term and focuses on the benefits it provides, namely saving users from themselves by pointing out the sometimes substantial money to be earned putting spare cash to work in a higher-yield account.  

Note:

1. Thanks, Mom, for the WSJ tip. And no, the "developers conference" mentioned in the article was not our FINOVATE, it was TechCrunch 40 held two weeks earlier. Mint won awards at both.  

Ever since receiving a private beta-invite a month ago, I've been meaning to run new personal finance site Mint through its paces. Then, after it won Best of Show at TechCrunch40 and our FINOVATE conference, I really wanted to see if the product could possibly live up to the expectations created while watching CEO Aaron Patzer give a demo (see previous coverage here, see note 1 below).  

But it takes time to really analyze a website, and I hadn't got around to it until today, when I was inspired by Ron Lieber and his team at the new Dow Jones/IAC site FiLife (press release here) as they reported on their individual results using the Mint's online personal finance tools (see coverage here).

I will file a series of reports as I use the program over the coming weeks. Today, we begin with the first impressions.

First Impressions
Homepage: One thing you notice when you visit Mint.com is that it looks nothing like a banking site (see first screenshot below). That can be good or bad. It's good because it sets the site apart from a normal financial services site. But that can also be a problem because the first, second, and third things users care about at a new financial site is whether it's secure or not. And a bankish "look and feel" can increase consumer trust.

But Mint does an admirable job walking the fine line of creating an engaging look while still reassuring visitors that it fiercely protects their data and privacy. The three large benefit statements in the middle create interest in the product, while the bank logos and the TRUSTe at the bottom provide visual clues that Mint is a serious player.

And the graphic design, leveraging the clever "Mint" name, combined with the light green color scheme, create an inviting site that should do well converting lookers into registered users (active users is another matter, more on that later).

Copy is concise, just 60 words above the fold (see note 2), and completely benefit oriented. Learn more button allows users to drill deeper, and you can't miss the call to action, Sign Up Now in the middle of the page.

Features page: Navigating to the feature page is simple, either click on the "Learn More" blue button in the middle of the page or use the "Features" tab at the top. The page does a great job laying out the key benefits with good use of headers and concise, bulleted lists supplemented with clear, attractive screen-captures of key points (see second screenshot below). Also note the prominent placement of big-name financial brands, Chase, Discover, and E*Trade, to increase trust.  

While the page does a good job highlighting features, it doesn't provide any interactive way of learning about the tool before signing up. Video and audio help goes a long way in demonstrating the features (see Jwaala/Amplify CU Money Tracker video here).

Mint.edu: A nice touch. Instead of calling it "education" or "blog" or something else no one would ever click on, Mint uses the clever Mint.edu (see third screenshot below). That's a URL that will resonate with its younger members and anyone familiar with higher education domain names. And once at the .edu site, engaging blog entries allow users to dig deeper into what is going on with the company and read about personal finance topics in general. RSS and email subscription options are clearly presented in the right-hand column.

Grade: A+

Mint Homepage (19 Oct 2007)

Mint Features page (also accessible via "Learn More" button on homepage)

Mint.edu page (19 Oct 2007)

Notes:

1. The video of Aaron Patzer's FINOVATE demo will be online within the next week at FINOVATE.com. In the meantime, you can see him on the Channel 5 SF news here.

2. Red line in screenshots 1 and 2 indicates the bottom of the screen using 1024 x 768 display on 13.3-inch laptop screen.

Compete's latest data confirms the spike in traffic at three-week old online personal finance startup Mint. The startup created considerable buzz after winning the $50,000 grand prize at TechCrunch in September (see previous coverage here).  

According to Compete, Mint's 200,000 unique visitors in September equaled that of $17-billion Webster Bank, the 64th largest U.S. bank or thrift holding company according to American Banker (Q1 2007). It will be interesting to see if Mint experiences a dramatic traffic decline after the publicity-driven visits slow down.   

Traffic at Mint.com (blue) vs. Webster Bank <websteronline.com> (red)

New TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld posted a short article yesterday (here) about Mint winning the Best of Show award at our FINOVATE conference (note 1). That post allowed TechCrunch's 600,000 readers to weigh in again on the pros and cons of Mint's model. During the past 24 hours, it attracted 72 comments, many with security concerns. Mint's CEO Aaron Patzer bravely joined the discussion and posted a half-dozen of the comments himself.

It's interesting to understand the concerns posted by TC readers. Of course, this is not at all a mainstream audience, so we take the complaints with a grain of salt. But it's still indicative of the hurdles a new financial institution, especially an unregulated one, faces when launching a new service.

Schonfeld's post also included the first metrics we've seen from the two-week old company:

• 50,000 total registered users
• 35,000 active users (have come at least once since registering)
• 5,000 power users (use it every day)
• 5,000 mobile alert users

I check Facebook about once or twice per week to see what new financial apps have been posted. So far the ones we've looked at include (see previous coverage here):

• Lending Club's P2P marketplace
• Prosper's Fantasy Banker
• PayPal
• Wesabe
• Buxfer
• TD Bank's Split It
• Obopay's BillMonk

The latest entrant, iWant from online personal finance specialist Geezeo (see screenshot below). iWant is an application that allows Facebook users to share with friends their wants and needs, such as "buy an iPhone" or post more goal-oriented items such as, "pay off my student loans" or "throw a graduation party." And Geezeo ties it up nicely by tapping PayPal's API to facilitate "contributions" to the financial goals. It's also integrated into Geezeo's online personal finance application so users can track their goal progress in real time. ChipIn offers similar payment functionality in its Facebook app (previous coverage here).

I wonder if Geezeo will make a P2P lending play here? If Geezeo's software included a repayment option, the iWant "donors" could easily become iWant "lenders" and a whole new market might open up. 

If you are attending our upcoming FINOVATE conference next week in New York, you'll be able to ask co-founders Peter Glyman and Shawn Ward yourself. We are fortunate to have not only Geezeo, but two other early Facebook innovators, Prosper and Lending Club on the DEMO stage. If you can't make the event, check our website in two weeks for full length videos of each DEMO.

Does it seem like every NetBanker blog post lately is a plug for our FINOVATE conference (oops...plug #1)? Hmm ... maybe we are a little stuck there.

OK, here's an online personal finance startup that's NOT presenting at FINOVATE (plug #2), Pertuity, the brainchild of ex-PNC Bank exec Kim Muhota. I like the overall look (below), decked out in our FINOVATE colors (plug #3), but clearly it's a placeholder for something more substantive (see note 1).

The Dare to Compare function, while provocatively named, is basically a well-dressed financial calculator that shows you where you stand in terms of income, savings, and debt compared to the rest of the country and those in your age group. It's a nice feature, but hardly unique and certainly not enough to attract visitors, let alone bring them back (see note 2).

UPDATE: After seeing Colin's comment (below), I looked at the site again and realized that I missed the "create a new group" function that allows you to compare your income, savings and debt against other pre-defined subsets. That's an interesting angle and could create a more sticky site with users going back to see how they are growing their income/savings/debt compared to various peer groups. I look forward to seeing how this plays out at Pertuity.

The Rate Survey, Expert Advise, and Blog sections are also just bare-bones link areas with little original content so far. The site appears to have launched just last week, so we are not criticizing (yet), just pointing out the current facts.

The website says "coming in 2008," so we'll be sure to check back in six months and see if they live up to their homepage boast:

....as we gear up towards our launch in early 2008; when we will bring to market a disruptive set of products that will uncomplicate your life, simplify your money and free your dreams.

Note:
1. The homepage has an overall calm look and feel, refreshing for a finance site. But Pertuity needs to lose the clip art of the three scary "suits" in the lower right and enlarge and break up the block of 10-point type in the middle (same goes for the micro-sized font in the blog).

2. Colin Henderson blogged positively about the Dare to Compare feature yesterday (here), but so far anyway, I don't share his enthusiasm that it's "quite revolutionary."  Colin probably has a better crystal ball than I, so I'll reserve judgement until the official launch. (Also, see my update above; obviously, Colin did a better job reviewing the functionality than I.)

Update (8 PM Pacific): Earlier this evening, Mint was named Best Presenting Company at TechCrunch 40 (see here) and took home the $50,000 grand prize. A good first day in the life of the startup!    

Congratulations to Mint on being one of just two financial services startups to win a spot at TechCrunch 40, the tech-startup con-fab in San Francisco that concludes this afternoon. More than 700 companies applied for the presentation slots, and just 40 were chosen. The other financial company was Cake Financial which competes with Zecco, Covestor, and Social Picks, in the "social investing" space, i.e., companies that help users track their investment portfolios and share them with others.

Mint presented in the "Productivity & Web Apps" category this morning and received high marks, scoring a 4.0 out of a possible 5.0 from 67 voters. During the first seven sessions (35 companies), only three have scored higher than 4.0. Mint also received favorable comments from the expert panel comprised of Guy Kawasaki, Esther Dyson, Roelof Botha, and Mike Arrington (blog post here).

For those of you attending our FINOVATE conference Oct. 2 in NYC, you'll have a chance to see a live demo from Mint CEO Aaron Patzer. If you can't wait until then, Mint opened its personal finance app to the public today with a public beta version. Let us know what you think.