Wesabe
Posted by Trey Reeme on November 17th, 2006
Lifehacker links to Wesabe in a post proclaiming Wesabe makes saving money social.
According to Wesabe’s about page:
Wesabe makes it easy to better understand how you spend your money and links you to a community of people dedicated to helping each other make better financial decisions.
Watch a three-minute overview video showing you how one of our members uses Wesabe.
Brent and I are watching this with mouths wide open. I haven’t signed up yet, but I guess I know where at least part of my weekend is going.
Okay, Trey I fell for this one. I was a bit intrigued, signed up and then it asked me to download my financial information from my website. No way! Not gonna! Who is this company. Read their privacy statement. I loved this one….”Any data you want us to keep private, we will.”. Are they crazy? Someone over there is drinking too much moonshine.
Additionally, I got Flashbacks of companies like Yahoo (later Yodlee) who tried this and failed. I’m sorry to say our credit union feel victim to this strategy. We partnered with Yodlee. We couldn’t get it off the ground.
I like the simplicity of and the overall vibe of the interface which looked like their using Ruby. That’s about it.
My advice….Don’t waste your time.
Cam,
Hi, I’m Jason CEO of Wesabe – I’m not certain what you don’t like about our privacy policy, but I’m happy to discuss it. In fact if you are interested you can call (800) 511-8544 between 12-4pm PST and we can talk about it on the phone. You can also email me at Jason@wesabe.com.
What a find! I’ve been monitoring many of Trey and Brent’s blog postings and this one really seems to have stumbled upon something awesome. (Much more intriguing to me than the debate about the Credit Union “Movement” and I’m a credit union guy).
Jason would you be willing to expand on your business model here? Are you merely providing a great service or planning to generate some revenue from Wasabe? In other words, as a trained economist, people are always motivated by something. Is there money in this for you or just warm fuzzies?
Jim,
Good question. When we started working on Wesabe we knew we could help people (or at least strongly believed it) but weren’t certain that we could make a business of it…and weren’t quite ready to go down the not-for-profit route.
Next year we plan to introduce “Pro” accounts that will cost $4.99 a month. Of course the basic account will be free, so people don’t have to spend sign up for a Pro account if they don’t want to. This is very much in the Flickr model.
Also, for anyone who signs up in 2006 they will get the Pro account for all of 2007 for free. So, if your reading this…paying the bill ($4.99) is a problem for 2008.
I think this is a good tool to bring some much needed education around personal finance to people and wrapped in the ‘social web’ phenomenon – that’s a good vehicle. I serve on the board of a credit union and have a sense for how much education is needed out there.
I hope that it can build from there with more creative layers. Tie-ins to loan education, mortgage vs renting models, micro lending (see recent post at the CoolTools blog), group purchasing, consumer revolts… I’ve only been thinking about it for 30 minutes or so but seems to have some potential.
I can appreciate the idea of a financial aggregator. I do already, it in a way, through my credit union’s electronic statement and credit card billing summary. I have no doubt that the security here is strong, but I have to agree with Cam. I can’t bring myself to share data. If I want to do this kind of analysis, I’d probably just buy Microsoft Money. Don’t get me wrong. I wish them well and the service is clearly very cool. I’m just too old fashioned to share data with anyone other than those people who actually handle my money.
Rob,
I think you take a very reasonable position. This product won’t be for everyone, and certainly not right now. I hope that in the future we make it so compelling that you change your mind. I assume you’ve set the bar high, so we’ll do our best.
Jason: Wesabe is a phenomenally interesting concept. Not everyone will want to participate in this kind of information sharing, but I am impressed.
I have to agree, that the sharing of data is very controversial. While the security may be high, I have to wonder what the advantages are, other than the fact that it is obviously more advanced, of using this online product over Microsoft Money, or Quicken software. From a credit union employee perspective, we sell our online billpay service with the aspect of security. Obviously it is more secure to sign onto one site to pay all your bills than to several different sites individually to pay each bill. I would have to have a great sense of security to suggest that someone uses this Wesabe site, verses using our online banking and bill pay service, and having them download it directly into their own Microsoft Money or Quicken software to track their spending. Plus, isn’t that what we, as a credit union are here for, is to help them with these financial processes? Why are we going to send them to what seems to be a potential “competitor” in this market? Maybe I am misunderstanding the product, but at this time, I would not feel comfortable recommending it to my members.
Jessica,
You raise an excellent question – does Wesabe come between the bank and its customer? I believe the answer is no because we are not in the business of holding money or making loans…banking. We give our users a view into their data and the ability to pool information to get value for money, (not just the lowest price) so they can realize their financial goals. These are two very different businesses and I believe they don’t have many overlapping competencies.
I would also ask you to consider our data bill of rights. We don’t own our customer’s data, we steward the data for as long as they see fit to entrust us with it. They can delete it, ignore it, move it, or ideally use the tools we’ve created to get value from it. I think this is very similar to what banks do with their customer’s money. They are your customers, but the money they put in the bank belongs to them, as (we believe) does the data. And since it is the customer’s data, they should determine where it goes…just like their money.
It is easy to see Wesabe as a threat to the customer relationship, but I think that smart bankers will see it as an opportunity. Today I was contacted by a bank asking how they could make it easier for their customer’s to use the service – that is a bank hungry for new customers.
On a personal note, I want to thank you for asking the question. I like Open Source CU for a number of reasons – one of them is that I thought I was talking to stakeholders that I couldn’t contact directly. I suspected that some bankers would see us as threat and I didn’t really know how to address the issue. Your question gives us the opportunity to shine a light on this topic. I hope you will come to share our beliefs about customer data and whether Wesabe is a threat to banks, and I also hope that you are enjoying the conversation as much as I am.
I do appreciate our information. Part of my job is to educate myself in different areas so I can educate my members. That is the part of my job that I enjoy most, is educating members to lead them to a stronger financial stability.
I have to admit, I am not completely sold on it, but in all fairness, I have not taken the time to research your site itself. I’ll get back to you on that one. :)