Is Wesabe the new Quicken?
Posted by Trey Reeme on November 22nd, 2006
I’ve loved watching the debate about Wesabe. The topic is more polarizing than I would’ve figured.
Wesabe is indeed hot right now (that’s the only bad pun in this post, I promise), and they’re getting mentions from the likes of GigaOm, BoingBoing, CBS News (scroll past the Michael Richards stuff), and many others.
I’ve stayed out of the debate for the five days since my last post. I wanted to get my hands dirty with Wesabe before bashing or praising it.
My take: it’s not for everybody, but it is for me.
Security
Let’s start with the question that keeps coming up in comment threads. “Aren’t you concerned with the level of security here, Trey?” Not really; I’m pleased with the performance of the Wesabe Uploader and the answers they’re giving ‘round the ‘ol “blogosphere”, as the kids call it these days.
Here’s how Marc Hedlund, one of Wesabe’s founders and O’Reilly Entrepreneur in Residence, responded to security concerns expressed on a post on the Pie Palace blog:
First, I agree that our privacy policy needs to be improved, but nowhere do we say that we’re selling anyone’s data. We’re not. We say that we share aggregated data, which is true: any user can get it for free on any page we host. None of that data is personally identifiable – we don’t say “Josh shops at grovery store X and has $2,000 in debt.” Instead, we say that the average checkout price at Safeway is $X and Whole Foods is $Y, so you can compare what you might expect to spend at different stores. Safeway and Whole Foods are probably obvious, but when you’re comparing auto repair shops, knowing the average price and the satisfaction rating from prior customers gives you good data to choose the shop you want.
.... You are certainly correct that there are security risks to keeping financial data on your computer, but how is that any different than using Quicken on your computer, which people have been doing for 20 years now? Quicken does exactly the same thing we do with downloading your financial data. I think our model is actually better on your point, since your own computer only holds credentials and not your full transaction history in our model, whereas Quicken holds credentials and history on your machine.
Sure, that’s coming from the horse’s mouth, but one thing you’ve got to understand about me and people in my demographic is how we trust who we trust. We trust based on WOM. Online, a lot of folks I trust (like 37signals for one) have been spreading some Wesabe love. (We first heard about Wesabe through that SVN post.)
What Wesabe is doing par excellence:
So what makes Wesabe different, beside the whole wisdom of crowds thing?
- Budgeting is built-in and saving is tied to goals.
- User reviews are also built in. It felt darn rewarding to assign certain merchants unfavorable ratings. It was downright gratifying.
- Wesabe’s interface is intuitive. Painless. Pleasurable (almost fun) to go through transactions.
- Wesabe isn’t bloated with features I’ll never need.
- Tagging (which has become second nature to me through del.icio.us and many other Web 2.0 apps) fits what I’m already doing.
- Wesabe conveys the following: Save towards a goal. Live within your means. Pay down your debt. Know where your money goes. Be thrifty. Get smarter about your budget.
- It feels like I know their team. I’m encouraged by how transparent the founders are being throughout the social web (heck, their CEO commented on my first Wesabe post almost immediately after I wrote it – this is the case on most other blogs talking about Wesabe, too).
As I mentioned, user-generated content drives Wesabe. If you don’t believe in the validity of that “wisdom of crowds” thing or in its application here, check out how Consumerist is already promoting Wesabe usage.
For a deeper look into the company, see PodTech for a great video interview with Jason and Marc yesterday. Listen for their insights into the fact that financial institutions don’t yet get the social web. “Banks” and “banking” are mentioned a good bit.
And for an even deeper look, check the Wesabe blog.
Where Wesabe needs improvement:
Here’s the main thing Wesabe must address: the site is bogging down and throwing errors way too frequently. Load times are slow. This is a big problem, but I’m sure they’re working on it. Chalk it up to their newfound (and well-founded) celebrity.
Why should a financial institution lose sleep?
When they get the bugs worked out and they’ve built up a stronger user base, look out. Wesabeans already aren’t afraid to say where they’re getting the best deals – including tips on financial service providers.
Answer the question, already, Trey!
So is Wesabe the new Quicken or a glorified Web 2.0 version thereof? That would be an insult to the fine folks at Wesabe. As Marc wrote last month,
Where Quicken falls down, for me and for many of the other people I’ve spoken with, is in two main areas: (1) it takes way too much work to keep it up to date (see my post on Tamagotchi Software and (2) it’s stuck in the past, in two senses, both by being entirely retrospective (“you were broke – you’re still broke – yup, signs point to broke”) and by focusing on the financial needs of twenty years ago (writing checks and balancing checkbooks). Self-awareness is necessary, and great, for any change you want to make. But it’s not sufficient for making a real change in your life.
And in the comments of that same post:
We aren’t out to replace Quicken (we’re looking for much simpler and easier tools, which necessitates leaving out a lot of what they do, and like I say I think they solve a set of problems I don’t believe match today’s needs)
Has anyone else tried it out?
Hey, Trey,
Thanks for all the kind words. I’m really glad Wesabe is working for you and appreciate you saying so publicly.
You’re absolutely right that the site has been too slow. We’ve already added a bunch of capacity and we’re going through the places where we still to speed things up.
One other criticism that would be right on the mark: we’re behind in responding to support requests. We’re going through them as quickly as we can. Most of them are requests for addition of banks and credit cards, many around the world.
Thanks again, and let us know if we can make the site better for you in any way.
Hi Trey,
As a blog about “open source credit unions”, I think that you missed the interesting part of the post on my blog:
Wesabe is reduced to using a weak security model because financial institutions are being inflexible. If I want to use some third party financial tool (such as Wesabe, or gdMoney) to monitor my accounts then I have to give that tool complete access to my accounts. If the tool is evil, then it can quietly ship my credentials off to some hacker or thief who will then drain my account. Even if the tool isn’t evil, it can be attacked by a hacker to steal my credentials.
Ideally, every financial institution would publish a secure monitoring feed that would allow third party tools to monitor accounts (sounds sort of like RSS, doesn’t it?). The monitoring feed would use a completely different set of credentials from the banking website that allows money to be moved around.
With once exception, banks aren’t doing that. Which is too bad.
I hadn’t thought about this until now, but one of the most interesting features of Wesabe is its normalization. It allows users to grab their own records in a known format, minus the account credentials. That data can, in turn, be fed into other tools that may provide more useful features than Wesabe’s charts and tips.
I’m not one to tell other people what to publish on their blog, but perhaps you would be interested in the idea of posting about the potentials of monitoring feeds?
Budgeting and merchant reviews are key here. They will form the basis of a trusted information source. Great review – too bad it doesn’t do non-US banks yet.
Colin – I’m one of the engineers at Wesabe. I just wanted to mention that we actually do support non-US banks. As long as the bank provides data in a standard format (OFX/QFX/QIF), we can import it. (If your bank isn’t listed on our site, let us know and we’ll add it.) We’ll even recognize foreign currencies and display your account data with the right units (although our aggregate financial data is still displayed in dollars—but we’re working on that).
We’d love it if you checked us out. If you have any problems, feel free to contact me directly (address is my first name at wesabe.com).
Hey Brad, I didn’t expect to see you at Open Source CU :-)
Jason
As a consumer, I would never use Wesabe for the same reason I never used Quicken or Microsoft Money. I’m not disciplined enough to remember to upload my information. Where does 2.0 stand on that?
The idea of feeds from FI’s to Wesabe is not new. Quicken & Money had similar models. The problem was that the toll charge’s for FI’s was too much. It had nothing to do with the fact that FI’s saw them as a threat.
As a Chief Technologist at a progressive credit union, the only way I would consider a technology such as Wesabe would be to integrate it into the online banking system. However, I would make minor tweaks to their approach.
Furthermore, I would disagree with Jason and Marc that FI’s don’t get the social web.
Cam,
Thank you for what you said about integrating Wesabe into the online banking system. I think this is a great idea. I agree that the idea behind Wesabe is a great one, with several potential benefits. I have talked to our “web” person here at our credit union about trying to enhance our online banking and bill pay to include a program that would encorporate the same type of programs.
Jason,
Still working on exploring your site, just running a little short on time these days. However, what are the possibilities of setting up some sort of “co-op” program, so to speak that would use your program, but in a way that was part of individual online banking programs. Does that make sense? Something that might make our members feel a little more secure, knowing that it is a part of the online banking that they are already using. But that would also provide them with the great education tools that you are offering. What do you think?
Jessica,
Please email me jason@wesabe.com…we should talk!
I’d really like to find a way to work with you.
I was very interested to learn about Wesabe from this blog. Then I asked our friends at Cornerstone Advisors to comment on Intuit’s acquisition of Digital Insight and was struck by this part of the response, included in the article “Looking Ahead to 2007” on the CUES Tech Port Web site at http://www.cuestechport.com/lookingaheadto2007
“Combining Inuit’s QuickBooks knowledge with DI’s Web platform could potentially produce a best-of-class Web cash management platform that the industry is currently lacking.”
Sounds to me like Intuit + Digital Insight = Wesabe, or something very much like it!
Lisa – great comment. Zopa, Prosper, Wesabe and Buxter (seen in Doug True’s latest post) are coming from outside the industry – and credit unions and CU vendors should be looking at this as a wakeup call.
Web 2.0 means much more than “blogs” and networks like Flickr; the social web is now extending into the more mundane budgeting and lending/borrowing, and these developments won’t be under the radar much longer.