Yodlee Archives - Page 18 of 18

FinovateFall 2010 Demo Lineup Revealed

By Eric Mattson Posted on August 17, 2010
Categories: ActivePath, Backbase, Betterment, billFLO, BillFloat, BillShrink, Blaze Mobile, Bling Nation, Bundle, Capital Access Network, CashEdge, ClairMail, Credit Sesame, Emue Technologies, FinovateFall 2010, Finsphere, FIS, Fiserv, Guardian Analytics, Hidden Levers, Ixaris, Jack Henry, Kapitall, Kashoo, Kiboo, Kony Solutions, Leadfusion, MatchFund, Micronotes, moneyStrands, Mortgagebot, mShift, oFlows, Optirate, Pageonce, PayNearMe, Plantly, Plastyc, Receivables Exchange, SapientNitro, Seeking Alpha, Segmint, Silver Tail Systems, SmartyPig, Standard Chartered Bank, Thwakk, TouMetis, Unience, Wonga, Worklight, Yodlee

We’re very excited to reveal the 56 cutting-edge companies that have been selected to demo their latest technology innovations on October 4 and 5 in New York City at FinovateFall.

Over the show’s two days, attendees will get to watch the future of fintech and banktech unfold on stage via fast-paced demos (28 each day) from these innovators. And then have a chance to interact with top executives from each of the demo companies during intimate networking sessions.

Without further delay, here’s the list of companies we’re excited to showcase:

If you’re interested in attending the conference, registering now will save you $100 on your ticket via the early-bird discount and reserve your spot (space is limited and we’re expecting to sell out). We’ll see you in New York!

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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Launching: The First Location-Based Fraud Monitoring Service, Finsphere’s PinPoint

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 9, 2010
Categories: Account Aggregation, Credit Reports & ID Theft Protection, Credit/Debit Cards, Finsphere, Security & Privacy, Yodlee

I’ve been looking forward to the day when financial companies would begin to leverage mobile phone location to fight payments fraud. That day has arrived with the launch of Finsphere’s PinPoint which began its private beta a few hours ago. We have 100 invite codes if you want to test the service free of charge (enter “Finovate” in the Promotional Code box on the signup page).

PinPoint is a subscription-based alert service that runs on top of online banking. Using Yodlee’s aggregation technology, PinPoint monitors all of the user’s card-based transactions, and sends email and text alerts on potentially fraudulent transactions based on a number of factors, one of which is the consumer’s physical location as indicated by the location of their mobile phone. Pricing has not been finalized.

The service competes with aggregated alerts from OFM’s such as Mint.com or Strands. But PinPoint’s main competition is the card issuers themselves. The service holds several potential advantages compared to financial institution services (note 1):

The addition of the consumer’s location is a huge help in identifying potential fraud and reducing false positives.
Receiving fraud alerts from a single, trusted source with a consistent design and methodology makes it more likely that the consumer will actually pay attention and take action.
The service provides contact info and help for reporting fraudulent transactions.
PinPoint’s entire mission is to identify fraud and help the end-user avoid paying for it; while financial institutions have similar high-level goals, they also have competing priorities that sometimes get in the way.

The startup also plans to connect the service to credit bureau data where it will compete with the credit monitoring players such as Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, Intersections and others (note 2). The demo videos show a mobile app, but that’s not part of the initial release.

Finsphere is a Seattle-based startup that’s been operating in stealth mode since 2007. The company has raised nearly $20 million in two rounds from Bezos Expeditions, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and Frazier Technology Ventures. The CEO and co-founder is Mike Buhrmann, a serial entrepreneur in the wireless/mobile space who originally worked at McCaw/AT&T. President Robert Boxberger is a former Wamu/Providian card exec (note 3).

Until today, press reports have been limited to reports of its first two rounds of venture funding (see previous Netbanker post). The company had developed a broad range of patented technologies dealing with location-based fraud tools. In addition to the consumer service launched today, the company has its eye on enterprise fraud-management tools.

PinPoint homepage (9 August 2010)

Activation screen
Users must confirm email address and mobile phone, then add one or more cards

Alert preferences
Users establish dollar thresholds for alerts, whether they want text and/or email delivery, and how often they want to receive then (daily or weekly)

Notes:
1. For more information on alerts, see the most recent Online Banking Report: Transaction Alerts & Streaming.
2. For more information, see Online Banking Report: Credit & Fraud Monitoring Services (August 2007).
3. Check out the company’s About page, where five top execs introduce themselves and provide a 60-90 second overview of the features and benefits of the service. A very good use of video.

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ANZ Bank Brings Account Aggregation to Australia; Introduces Robot Mascot Qi

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 20, 2008
Categories: Account Aggregation, Advertising & Promotion, ANZ Bank, iPhone, Yodlee

While making the rounds in the Finovate networking room last week, I saw an intriguing graphic on Yodlee’s big-screen monitor (see inset). It turns out to be Qi (pronounced “key”), the robot mascot for Yodlee’s latest aggregation client, Australia’s ANZ Bank, which launched that day (press release). The new service is called MoneyManager (see screenshot below; note 1).

The cute little beast also appears in the bank’s new iPhone promo on the ANZ website (here). The webpage features the app running in a full-size iPhone emulator. But that’s not what you notice first. The bank uses a little programming trick to turn your curser into a GIANT robot hand (see screenshot below). It’s a little disconcerting at first, but it does get your attention and proves you are dealing with a creative enterprise. I like it.

According to Rob Findley, blogging at The Bank Channel, MoneyManager can be used by any Australian and does NOT require an ANZ account relationship.

ANZ’s iPhone webpage with giant robot hand curser (19 Oct 2008)

ANZ’s MoneyManager webpage features a less intrusive view of Qi, the robot mascot (19 Oct. 2008)

Note:
1. For more info, see our Online Banking Report on Account Aggregation.

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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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Online Personal Finance Heats Up: Part 2

By Jim Bruene Posted on September 11, 2007
Categories: Digital Insight, Finovate, Intuit, Personal Financial Management, Yodlee

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.

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Back Story: Wall Street Journal’s Article on Online Financial Planning Tools from Banks

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 13, 2007
Categories: Bank of America, Online Banking Report, Personal Financial Management, Wells Fargo, Yodlee

The Wall Street Journal published an extra section yesterday on personal finance entitled, Your Money Matters. Online financial tools were highlighted in Jane Kim's, "Check it Out: New online tools from financial institutions can help consumers manage their money."

Here's the back story on several of the items mentioned in the article:

Our sister publication, Online Banking Report, was cited as the source of the following statistic: "About 16% of U.S. households used some personal-finance feature at least once in 2006. That percentage is expected to climb to an estimated 33% by 2016, with nearly three-quarters of those households using personal-finance tools offered by their financial institution online."
The information cited in the WSJ story was contained in the report we published last fall in Personal Finance Features for Online Banking (OBR 131/132; see Table 3, p. 3, lines 4 and 10). Current usage estimates were based in part from data provided by Javelin Strategy as shown in Table 2 on the same page.
In the article, Bank of America's My Portfolio was the first of two existing personal finance tools mentioned. The service, powered by Yodlee, was quietly launched in December and was covered in NetBanker at the time (link here) and received an OBR Best of the Web award in our final report of 2006 (OBR 137) where it was rated the third most important development of 2006.
The second example cited was Wells Fargo's MySpendingReport (see inset and previous coverage here). The service, which is basically just a consolidated view statement data across the bank's transaction accounts, is a great example of positioning online banking features in a way that resonates with users. It was awarded an OBR Best of the Web in 2005, finishing the year as the tenth most important new development of the year (report here).

The story finished with hints of new services planned for later this year at Everbank, Bremer Financial (powered by Corillian), and a Digital Insight tool that allows users to hand enter additional bill payments in order to their entire payments picture in one place.

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Bank of America is First Major U.S. Bank to Integrate Personal Finance into Online Banking

By Jim Bruene Posted on December 26, 2006
Categories: Account Aggregation, Bank of America, Best of the Web, Personal Financial Management, Yodlee

Bank of America is the first major U.S. bank to provide full online personal financial management (PFM) within its online banking service. It's an important development and one we predicted in our detailed look at online personal finance (Online Banking Report #131/132, published in September). So, in conjunction with our sister publication, we are awarding it the fifth and final OBR Best of the Web for 2006 (click here for other recent winners).

The bank uses its Yodlee-powered My Portfolio account-aggregation service to deliver the PFM functions. BofA is the first financial institution to use Yodlee's new MoneyCenter module since its launch six months ago (see our coverage here).

The bank has chosen to offer the full MoneyCenter suite with Net Worth Summary, Investment Detail, Transactions, Rewards, Email, and Search on the main page (see screenshot below).

My Portfolio also includes basic personal finance functionality, including budgeting, categorizing and a nice array of preformatted reports including:

Cash Flow Analysis
Expense Analysis
Budget vs. Actual
Credit Card Utilization
Get Transaction Reports
Set Budget Goals

See Online Banking Report 131/132 for more details on Yodlee's MoneyCenter.

Analysis
Overall, we believe the new PFM functions are a great addition to the bank's online banking program. However, it still feels a bit "bolted on" to the core online banking service. For instance, My Portfolio does not yet warrant a place on the primary top navigation bar. Instead, users must click on a link in the middle of the main Account Overview screen.

Once the Yodlee-powered service has loaded (which took 10 to 15 seconds in our tests at broadband speeds), it's relatively well integrated. A second My Portfolio navigation bar is loaded under the main online banking navigation. Finally, a third row displays the options available for each function in row two (see screenshot below).

The pages load relatively fast as long as you stay within the My Portfolio area. However, moving back and forth between BofA-served online banking functions and Yodlee-served My Portfolio functions is a bit clunky with the 15-second delay. But the overall experience will be fine once My Portfolio is incorporated into primary navigation.

The main My Portfolio page is automatically pre-filled with applicable BofA accounts; however, in my case, I was unable to update older credit card information. When clicking Update All Accounts in the upper right, error messages indicated that my Bank of America credit cards could not be updated (see screenshot below).

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Yodlee Announces Bill Pay Switch Kit

By Jim Bruene Posted on September 21, 2006
Categories: Account Switching, Bill payment, Epayments, Yodlee

This week Yodlee announced its new Bill Pay Account Accelerator, a bill-pay-switching tool designed to help banks attract active users of competitive bill payment services. Not only does Yodlee's wizard move payee information, it also can cancel and move previously scheduled payments, including recurring ones.

The service will be piloted in fourth quarter and launched in early 2007.

Analysis
If it works, it could reduce the "retention benefits" of electronic bill pay by making it easier to switch banks. The American Banker article reporting the new service hit hard on that aspect. However, we think the concern is overblown. It's not that time-consuming for most people to move their payee information, requiring 10 or 15 minutes of "cutting and pasting" or "scribbling and retyping," then a few more minutes to reschedule upcoming payments.

What's MUCH harder for the user is making sure outstanding paper checks have cleared and, more importantly, unwinding preauthorized debits such as important insurance and loan payments. Those require contacting the payee directly and hoping that your instructions to change the debit are processed in a timely fashion.

But the biggest issue is motivating users to make a checking account switch in the first place. And that's where Yodlee solution could provide a big boost, offering the perception of radically simplifying the switchover. And if Yodlee expands the tool to also transfer the entire account history, not just the bill pay history, it could become an important industry tool.

Since it doesn't ship until next year, we'll refrain from superlatives until we've had a chance to test it. But Yodlee has a good track record in hooking accounts together, and we expect the new service to be functional. However, whether banks will adopt it is another matter. It will have to be drop-dead simple to use or banks will not want the ensuing customer-service nightmare.

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Yodlee’s New MoneyCenter Goes Live

By Jim Bruene Posted on July 5, 2006
Categories: Account Aggregation, Personal Financial Management, Yodlee

As the rest of the country watched fireworks, Yodlee <yodlee.com> which snagged two mentions in the Wall Street Journal during the last week of June (NB June 28), launched its biggest product improvement since the company went live with account aggregation in 2000 (see OBR 63, "Does Yodlee Make Quicken Obsolete?").

Yodlee's new MoneyCenter is a full-featured PFM operating on Yodlee's server. It allows banks to offer the key budgeting and reporting functions much loved by Quicken and Money users. Throw in real-time bill pay at card-accepting merchants, a suite of triggered alerts, a dose of account aggregation, and lifetime statement archives (the feature that inspired the Saturday June 24 WSJ column entitled, "A financial-data vault online) and you have a feature-set that deserves serious consideration in your 2007/2008 plans.

It's an important online banking development, and we'll take an in-depth look at it in the next issue of Online Banking Report (available in early August).

—JB

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Online Banking’s “Second Wave”

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 28, 2006
Categories: Bank 2.0, Citibank, Strategies, Yodlee

In today's Wall Street Journal, personal finance writer Jane Kim does a roundup of what she calls "the next wave of online banking." The impetus for the article was Yodlee's new MoneyCenter that will be available to consumers in early July. I was interviewed for the article and provided several of the examples along with the market size estimate.

In addition to Yodlee, the following developments were chronicled in the article:

Citibank's <citibank.com> 50-fold increase in online interbank transfer limits from around $2,000 to $100,000 this summer. In what may simply be a self-serving comment made to a reporter, the bank cites the demand for its new e-Savings account as an impetus for the change.
Commerce Bank's (NJ) Virtual Private Bank <virtualprivatebank.com> for customers with $1 million or more in investable assets.
Wells Fargo's My Spending Report, a simple integrated spending report we discussed last year. (NB Feb. 17, 2005)
Bank of America's <bankamerica.com> account aggregation and recently expanded account alerts.
Chase's <chase.com> next-day bill payment.

Analysis
Although most of these examples are relatively minor improvements, it's good to see the mainstream press recognizing online banking innovations. The last few years have been dominated by security concerns, and we believe it's a great sign that reporters are looking for "what's next." It would be wise to have an answer to that question when your local paper calls.

We believe the Virtual Private Bank (VPB) from Commerce and the Yodlee system deserve closer examination. We'll cover Yodlee's new product when it goes live next month. And, although we won't be able to drop a million into Commerce Bank, we'll take the VPB for a test drive later this week.

—JB

If you’d like to learn more about the future of online banking, check out the Online Banking & Bill Pay Forecast: Current, future and historical usage: 1994 to 2016 from our sister publication, The Online Banking Report.

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Financial Mashups like Billmonk

By Jim Bruene Posted on April 30, 2006
Categories: Account Aggregation, BillMonk, Epayments, PayPal, uMonitor, Yodlee

In the musical world, a mashup combines music from one song with lyrics from another, often mixing two very different genres. One of the more famous examples is the Grey Album by DJ Danger Mouse that put words from Jay-Z's Black Album on top of chords from The Beatles White Album.

Programmers have their own definition: combining content seamlessly from two different sources. For example, Kayak <kayak.com> is a powerful travel site that pulls price quotes out of hundreds of websites and displays them in tabular format and locates them visually on a Google Map (click on the inset to see a Las Vegas hotel search).

In online finance, we have seen mashups from Yodlee, uMonitor, and others that marry account information from a number of sources to create an aggregated view. But the most successful financial mashup yet is PayPal, which put an email/Web interface in front of two established electronic payment mechanisms, ACH and MasterCard/Visa.

Who will launch the next successful mashup? There is quite a bit of activity in the payments space, many trying to mimic PayPal's success using a cell phone interface. For example Obopay and TextPayMe (NetBanker, April 26), and BillMyCell from Black Lab Mobile <blacklabmobile.com>.

Another company, BillMonk <billmonk.com> has created a Web-based system of sharing expenses designed for the work-hard, play-hard urban singles set. Users can send expenses to be shared to their account at BillMonk using text messages, and then log in later to finalize the payment split and let everyone know who owes what (see example right). The company doesn't yet facilitate the actual payment, but they are looking for a partner to power the financial transactions.

We're still not convinced the market for "splitting expenses among friends" is big enough to sustain one, let alone four service providers (see NetBanker, April 26). But we ARE sure the enterprising founders of BillMonk will find a niche somewhere in the payments space.

BillMonk has added more new features to its bill-sharing platform in the past four months than most companies implement in four years. It reminds us of the pace at another small payments company that we were watching closely six years ago as they morphed from a closed PDA-to-PDA payment system to the primary platform for eBay buyers (see Online Banking Report #54 for a view of PayPal in the early days).

To get an idea of the pace at BillMonk, read a few entries from their blog <billmonk.wordpress.com>. Then realize that this is not the work of a vast team of programmers, PR agents, and marketers. It's just two guys in a Seattle apartment who are also answering customer queries, paying the bills, building the website, taking out the trash, and talking to reporters (see the profile in the Seattle Times, April 24).

Action Items
My advice for financial institutions:

Hire these guys
If that's not practical, then behave like them; constantly improving your website and to the extent you control it, your online banking and bill pay system

I will bring you an update on the company as soon as I can corner one or both of the founders in a coffee shop.

—JB

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