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 within 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 Muhoto. 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.

One of the biggest themes at our upcoming FINOVATE 2007: DEMOing the Future of Online Finance (here) is the interesting developments in the online personal finance space (see lineup below).

As we mentioned last week, the race to add personal financial management (PFM) features to online banking sites is just getting started. To some extent, every bank and credit union supporting online banking already offers extensive personal finance functionality. Think back on how the average person managed day-to-day finances prior to 1997: telephone calls, ATM slips, or in my case, the moment of terror once per month when opening the monthly bank statement.

But now that everyone offers base level PFM, the new race is to provide advanced features to hold on to customers, attract new ones, and potentially cross-sell complimentary products such as debt consolidation, mortgage refis, insurance and so on (see note 1). We also hope to see some fee income from the new features, either through elevated checking account fees, or with premium online banking surcharges (note 2). The latter appears unlikely to happen in the United States unless Bank of America starts charging fees.

At FINOVATE we'll see demos from five key players:

• Two industry veterans, both two-time OBR Best of the Web winners, will be launching significant new versions this fall: Digital Insight (Intuit) and Yodlee
• Two "class of 2007" new startups: Jwaala (coverage here) and Mint (coverage here)
• And Geezeo, which recently changed its name and moved aggressively into personal finance (coverage here)

Digital Insight (Intuit)
One of the most intriguing acquisitions in online banking in the past ten years was Intuit's purchase last year of online banking platform provider Digital Insight (see coverage here and here). Everyone expected the merged companies to push hard on personal finance, the core of Intuit's much-admired brand. I've had a chance to see the Personal FinanceWorks and Small Business FinanceWorks demos several times and came away impressed. Combined with the depth of Digital Insight's client base, these products have a chance to become the online banking standard within a few years. Intuit is a two-time OBR Best of the Web winner with its Web-based tax services.

Yodlee
Yodlee used to be known as "that account aggregation company." But over the years they've worked hard to shed that image and morph into a full-service financial tools provider. The company offers account-opening tools, bill payment services, personal financial management, long-term archives, and, yes, account aggregation, although it's now more integrated with the company's other services, especially its MoneyCenter personal financial manager. MoneyCenter is the engine behind Bank of America's MyPortfolio which helped Yodlee win its second OBR Best of the Web (see coverage here).    

Notes:

1. For more info on online personal finance, see Online Banking Report #132/133 and #142/143.

2. For more info on premium online banking pricing, see Online Banking Report #109.

The race to become the next Quicken of online finance is heating up this fall with several launches expected before year-end (note 1). At our upcoming new products conference, FINOVATE 2007, you will be treated to live demos of five leading personal finance apps. Three are newcomers: Geezeo, Jwaala, Mint, and two are industry vetera