Geezeo Archives - Page 9 of 10

Alumni News — Weeks of December 13 and 20, 2010

By finovate Posted on December 30, 2010
Categories: Backbase, Blaze Mobile, BrightScope, Capital Access Network, CashEdge, Expensify, FIS, Geezeo, GoalMine, Kapitall, Kasasa, Lending Club, mFoundry, Mint.com, Mozo, SmartyPig, Victrio

To see Finovate news updates in real-time, follow our feed on Twitter.

Backbase explores mobile banking in its fall webinar series. http://bit.ly/finovate1293

BlazeMobile creates smart payments sticker.http://bit.ly/finovate12133

BrightScope releases top 30 retirement plans. http://bit.ly/finovate12143

Capital Access special report on “Black Friday” and small business sales data. http://bit.ly/finovate1282

SunTrust has added the “Transfer Now” product suite from CashEdge including person-to-person and me-to-me transfers. http://bit.ly/finovate12165

ClairMail and Cardlytics partner to provide transaction marketing opportunities. http://bit.ly/finovate1281

Expensify is hiring for multiple positions. – The company is currently looking for Web developers and computer engineers at several levels. http://bit.ly/finovate1216

FIS launches innovative new mobile banking product. — Users can establish mobile account management with their debit card, no online banking signup needed. http://bit.ly/finovate1291

Geezeo selected by University Federal Credit Union as PFM provider. http://bit.ly/finovate12151

GoalMine hosting cash contest via Facebook to spread the word. http://bit.ly/finovate1292

Kapitall closes series A funding round. — The company did not release funding amounts or sources. http://bit.ly/finovate12163

Kasasa on “green” community banking. — See what a green bank looks like. http://bit.ly/finovate12132

Seventy percent of US Airlines have migrated to Kony Mobile-powered travel apps. http://bit.ly/finovate12142

Lending Club featured in San Fransisco Chronicle, Black Enterprise, and PBS. http://bit.ly/finovate12131

mFoundry deploys Washington Trust Bank’s mobile banking app. — This makes 260 customers so far using the mFoundry mobile applications. http://bit.ly/finovate12161

Congratulations to Mint founder, Aaron Patzer, winner of a TechFellow Award for General Management. http://tcrn.ch/finovate1296

M ozo powering new “Compare, Ditch and Switch” campaign. — The services allows Australians to shop around for better banking services. http://bit.ly/finovate1283

Just in time for the Holidays, PopMoney gift cards at www.giftcardmall.com.

SmartyPig launches cash rewards card with only a one-time activation fee of $4.95. http://bit.ly/finovate12134

Victrio receives $5 million investment for voice-printing technology. http://bit.ly/finovate12141

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FinovateFall 2010 Demo Videos Now Available

By finovate Posted on November 7, 2010
Categories: ActivePath, Backbase, Betterment, billFLO, BillFloat, BillShrink, Blaze Mobile, Bling Nation, Bundle, Capital Access Network, ClairMail, Credit Sesame, Dynamics, Emue Technologies, FinovateFall 2010, Finsphere, FIS, Fiserv, Geezeo, Guardian Analytics, Hidden Levers, Ixaris, Jack Henry, Kapitall, Kashoo, Kiboo, Kony Solutions, Leadfusion, MatchFund, mFoundry, Micronotes, Mortgagebot, mShift, oFlows, Optirate, Outright.com, Pageonce, PayNearMe, Plantly, Plastyc, PopMoney, Receivables Exchange, SapientNitro, SecondMarket, SecureKey, Segmint, Silver Tail Systems, SmartyPig, Standard Chartered Bank, The Receivables Exchange, Thwakk, TouMetis, Unience, Wonga, Worklight, Yodlee

We’re pleased to announce that the demo videos from FinovateFall 2010 are now available for free download (or immediate consumption) from the Finovate archives.

This fall’s NYC conference showcased 56 handpicked companies doing 7-minute demonstrations (no slides allowed) of their latest technology innovations to a sold-out audience of 650 financial & banking executives, venture capitalists, press, analysts and entrepreneurs.

Check out these cutting-edge ideas in financial, banking, payments, mobile, lending, investing and security technologies today for inspiration and your next edge on the competition!

(P.S. If you’re interested in joining us at the next Finovate event, tickets are now on sale for FinovateEurope (Feb, 1, 2011 in London). It is going to be an amazing showcase of European and global fintech innovation!)

Eric Mattson is CEO of Online Financial Innovations, the parent company of NetBanker, Online Banking Report and the Finovate Conference Series. He can be reached at eric@netbanker.com.

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Twittering Vantage Credit Union Taps Geezeo for Online PFM

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 26, 2010
Categories: Geezeo, Personal Financial Management, Twitter

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)

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Stanford Federal Credit Union Readies Launch of Geezeo-Powered MyMo PFM

By Jim Bruene Posted on December 18, 2009
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Geezeo, Personal Financial Management

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.

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Wesabe to Power Bank and Credit Union Personal Finance Communities with White-label Deals

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 18, 2009
Categories: Geezeo, Personal Financial Management, Wesabe

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.

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Online Personal Finance Traffic Soars; Mint Passes One Million Unique Visitors

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 9, 2009
Categories: Geezeo, Intuit, LendingTree, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Thrive, Wesabe

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

	Jan 2009	Dec 2008	Jan 2008	YOY Chg
Mint	1.1 mil	890,000	200,000	5.2x
Geezeo	220,000	170,000	18,000	12x
Yodlee	120,000	100,000	84,000	44%
Finicity/Mvelopes	100,000	71,000	91,000	10%
Wesabe	89,000	140,000	56,000	60%
BudgetTracker	27,000	14,000	15,000	86%
Buxfer	22,000	15,000	13,000	78%
PearBudget	12,000	7,600	4,200	3x
ClearCheckbook BudgetPulse	11,000 8,200	9,100 4,300	4,600 2,200	2.3x 3.6x
Total	1.7 mil	1.4 mil	490,000	4.5x

Table 2: Traffic at the online PFM class of 2008

	Jan 2009	Dec 2008	Month Chg
Quicken Online	150,000	53,0 00	1.8x
PNC Virtual Wallet	41,000	45,000	(9%)
Rudder	39,000	61,000	(35%)
Thrive	21,000	14,000	52%
Scred	2,600	630	4x
Expensr	2,500	3,700	(32%)
RateSurfer	2,100	3,600	(41%)
Expensify	1,400	600	2.5x
Banzai	1,300	1,500	(15%)
GreenSherpa	400	ina	—
iThryv	210	2,100	(90%)
Total	260,000	185,000	41%

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.

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Lending Club Launches UNCRUNCH AMERICA, a Microsite Advocating Social Lending

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 19, 2009
Categories: Credit Karma, Geezeo, Lending Club, P2P Lending

During the Christmas holidays, Lending Club and its partners launched a clever new microsite, UNCRUNCH AMERICA at <uncrunch.org>. The site promotes peer-to-peer lending as a way to help increase the availability of credit in the United States (see screenshots below).

Joining the effort are four others:

Credit Karma, a provider of free credit scores (coverage here)
Geezeo, an online PFM (coverage here)
On Deck Capital, a small business finance specialist
ChangeWave, an investment research and publishing company owned by InvestorPlace Media

The site explains the concept behind peer-to-peer lending and funnels visitors to Lending Club or On Deck Capital to borrow. Lending Club was promoting the site on its homepage (see third screenshot), but it’s no longer mentioned. And none of the other partners mentions it on their sites.

The site consists of just two pages, the homepage and a Learn More page listing the partners. The homepage uses Flash to deliver five different messages. The red action buttons lead to a special landing page to Lending Club (see third screenshot).

According to American Banker, Lending Club hired Tobin Smith, the chairman of ChangeWave Research, to create the campaign.

Analysis
Overall, I like the UNCRUNCH idea. It’s timely. It has a catchy name. And it resonates with consumers. But companies must be very careful using consumer advocacy as a marketing strategy. While most consumers understand the need for the sponsor to make a buck, they can see right through anything that appears overly self-serving.

In financial services, credit unions have a distinct advantage here. As member-owned cooperatives, their consumer advocacy messages are believable. Shareholder-owned banks have less credibility, but can still pull it off if they back up their words with a record of action.

I think that’s why ING Direct’s We the Savers campaign works (see previous post here). For its entire eight years in the United States, the bank has consistently promoted savings and thrift. So few question its motivations behind the We the Savers petition drive, though clearly it supports the bank’s for-profit savings program.

On the other hand, UNCRUNCH AMERICA was a bit misleading when it first launched (see first screenshot below from Jan 7). But with the recent improvement in disclosing the site’s purpose and primary sponsors, I think it’s acceptable now (see second screenshot below from Jan. 19).

Here are the main improvements:

It wasn’t clear that the primary sponsors were lenders. But the new site includes Personal Loans and Small Business Loans sections that clearly disclose the Lending Club and On Deck Capital involvement. There is also new fine print at the bottom of the page that further identifies the sponsors.
The original copy made it sound like a completely altruistic effort with its main pitch, Invest in America. That section has been completely removed and the site no longer solicits investors/lenders. It’s clear now that the site is designed to generate loan leads. The main button on the homepage was changed from Invest in America to I Need a Loan.

I’m relieved that UNCRUNCH.org has stepped up its transparency. At this point in the financial mess, we need lenders and other financial entities to be totally upfront with the public so as not to invite even more regulation than what is already coming. Given its six-month hiatus in 2008 while it revamped to comply with new SEC requirements, Lending Club should understand that better than most.

Other financial institutions should consider similar cooperative efforts in their local areas. The public could use some positive messages from the banking sector.

1. UNCRUNCH AMERICA homepage before improvements (7 Jan. 2009)

2. Homepage after transparency improvements (19 Jan. 2009)

3. Lending Club homepage featured UNCRUNCH button (7 Jan. 2009)
but it has since been removed

Note:

1. For more info, see our Online Banking Report on Peer-to-Peer Lending.

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Online Personal Finance Traffic More than Doubles; PNC Virtual Wallet Grabs Second Place

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 23, 2008
Categories: Geezeo, Metrics & Market Research, Mint, Personal Financial Management, PNC Bank, Rudder, Wesabe

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

	Sep 2008	Sep 2007	Gain	’08 vs. ’07 Multiple
Mint	530,000	200,000	330,000	2.7 x
Geezeo	72,000	11,000	61,000	6.5 x
Wesabe	89,000	33,000	56,000	2.7 x
Yodlee	97,000	50,000	47,000	1.9 x
Finicity/Mvelopes	91,000	73,000	18,000	1.2 x
Buxfer	9,000	3,500	5,500	2.5 x
PearBudget	6,300	2,100	4,200	3.0 x
ClearCheckbook	6,200	2,800	3,400	2.2 x
BudgetTracker	12,000	12,000	0	Flat
Total	910,000	380,000	530,000	2.4x

Table 2: The online PFM class of 2008

	Sep 2008	Sep 2007	Gain
PNC Virtual Wallet	140,000	0	140,000
Rudder	50,000	2,000 (1)	48,000
Expensify	9,600	0	9,600
GreenSherpa	6,300	0	6,300
RateSurfer	4,400	0	4,400
Thrive	3,500	0	3,500
Expensr	2,900	0	2,900
Banzai	2,700	0	2,700
iThryv	2,000	0	2,000
T otal	220,000	2,000	220,000

Grand Total	1.2 million	380,000	750,000

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.

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Enliven Your Website with Streaming Activity, Tickers, or Counters

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 18, 2008
Categories: Bank 2.0, Geezeo, ING Direct, Zillow

One thing hard to approximate online is the hubbub of a busy branch, retail outlet, or event. Other than the occasional popup inviting you to chat about whatever financial product you’re viewing, most financial websites are lonely experiences. Sure, Web-based video can personalize the online experience, but that’s still a one-on-one experience. That’s why building an online community is so important in the long run (see note 1).

One way to demonstrate just how much activity takes place at your website or through electronic banking, is to show a stream of real-time activity. For example, Zillow’s new mortgage marketplace shows realtime mortgage quotes as they come in from the mortgage brokers using the site (see above).

Geezeo recently added a public news feed to its site, similar to what social media users experience at Facebook.

And ING Direct has counted up the interest in pays customer in a little meter within online banking, as of a few minutes ago it was $4.5 million shy of $9 billion.

But the most daring example is Progressive Insurance which displays actual specific rate comparisons to its competitors in the center of its homepage
(see screenshot below).

Financial institutions could show streams of activity in the following areas:

credit/debit card transaction data: $63.42 at JC Penney’s Minneapolis, MN
bill payment transaction data (only to major merchants): $124.22 to PGE, LA, CA
funds transfers: A.C. transferred $1500 from checking to savings
results from online calculators: $15,000 vehicle at 6.5% for 5 years = $432/mo
mortgage quotes/locks: $572,000 purchase mortgage locked today at 6.375% with 1% fee
insurance quotes: $1,000,000 10-year level term for 42-year-old nonsmoker for A.E. in Tampa for $1123/yr
interest paid on deposits, checks processed, loans funded, website visits, online banking login, bills paid
comments in blogs/forums
search terms used on-site and possibly the top results
questions asked/answered online

Of course, you’ll need to make certain there is absolutely no data streamed that could be traced back to an individual user.

Note:
1. See the following Online Banking Reports for more information:

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Bank of America Reports 2.5 Million Users of My Portfolio, its Online Personal Finance Tool

By Jim Bruene Posted on April 21, 2008
Categories: Bank of America, BillMonk, Expensr, Geezeo, Market Research & Metrics, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Wesabe, Yodlee

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).

Company	Users (1)	% of Total	March Traffic(2)	Jan Traffic(2)	Chg
Bank of America	2.5 million	86%	—	—	—
Mint	180,000	6%	160,000	150,000	7%
Wesabe	100,000	3%	28,000	41,000	(32%)
Buxfer	80,000	3%	8,400	9,200	(9%)
Geezeo	20,000+	0.7%	8,400	14,000	(40%)
NetWorthIQ	13,000	0.5%	10,000	11,000	(10%)
BillMonk	10,000+	0.3%	1,700	1,000	+70%
Expensr	Five figs	0.3%+	2,000	1,700	+18%
Total	2.9 million	100%

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.

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400,000 Users at Online Personal Finance Startups

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 22, 2008
Categories: BillMonk, Buxfer, Expensr, Geezeo, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Wesabe

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.

Company	Users	Traffic
Mint*	135,000	150,000
Wesabe*	100,000	41,000
Buxfer*	80,000	9,200
Geezeo	20,000+	14,000
NetWorthIQ	13,000	11,000
BillMonk	10,000+	1,000
Expensr*	Five figures	1,700
Total	370,000+	230,000

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

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Geezeo iWants Facebook Users

By Jim Bruene Posted on September 26, 2007
Categories: Epayments, Facebook, Geezeo, P2P Lending, PayPal, Personal Financial Management

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.

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