Wesabe

Online financial services site Wesabe has announced a new partnership today which will bring Wesabe's financial tools to the UK. The tools are live on the Daily Telegraph's website, telegraph.co.uk. Wesabe already claims to support members in 30 countries. From what I can recall, this is the first international deal for any of the new crop of U.S. based online financial services providers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Telegraph self-reported 22.9 million unique visitors in September 2008. It will be interesting to see how UK residents take to the idea of sharing their bank information/passwords with an external source and one that is based outside the UK. Wesabe allows their customers to upload files as well which does not require bank passwords to be shared. Most of the other new online banking services do not support this option and require bank passwords to be shared.

In any event this looks like a huge win for Wesabe as it should provide good visibility for their service in another large country outside the U.S.

Online financial services site Wesabe has announced a leadership change effective today. Co-founder Marc Hedlund is back in as CEO, replacing co-founder Jason Knight. Jason is leaving to be with his newborn son who has been diagnosed with a serious respiratory condition that requires ongoing medical attention and constant care. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the entire Knight family.

Marc has a lengthy blog post explaining more about the transition and how he and Jason came to work together. Check out my interview with Marc Hedlund for more background on him and to learn why Wesabe is different than the competition in the online financial management space.

Editor's note: Wesabe competitor Geezeo is a current CN sponsor.

Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) has launched their new online product called Quicken Online. Immediately one starts to think of the "new" players in this area which include: SpendView, Mint, Geezeo and Wesabe. There's certainly room for multiple players in this market, especially as each offers something a bit different. But Intuit can outspend all of them on marketing and will most likely be able to grab the mainstream segment relatively easy.

Quicken Online has a different business model than the competition - free trial then $2.99/month. Most of the competitors are either using some form of advertising or, in Mint's case, savings proposals based on the data you upload.

If you've been reading CenterNetworks for a while, you know that I have issues with all of these sites that require you to give them all of your financial passwords so they can access your system. Wesabe is the only one who offers an upload option so you can decide how much to trust them. Quicken Online faces the same issues as the others as you are required to give them all of your logins and passwords for your financial institutions. Unlike the others, Intuit has a 10 billion dollar market cap and has been creating Quicken for 25 years. Does that change my opinion on it? Perhaps a pinch but still not enough as I'd like. Especially when at the end of the video below they joke that they purchased a verisign security system to make customers feel better. Oh snap, the Verisign logo is gone now - but it's in the video - what does that mean?

Outside of the data security issues, the application looks like a standard Web application. Think of the most basic Quicken version, and you have it. I would have preferred that they separated it from the rest of the Quicken Web site and given it a fresh look and feel. Right now it feels jammed into the old Quicken site. This is an area that the competition will need to capitalize on. Especially because from what I've seen the competition is using "socialness" and most of them are using heavier trending to help you spend less and save more.

To try to hit the early adopter tech set, they created an iPhone app. Actually it's not iPhone specific, it's just a mobile version of the site. They do note that this version is only available on the iPhone and not the Blackberry or other mobile devices.

Intuit has a short video demo of the product which is worth checking out. Also check out Rafe's review from his exclusive access a month ago.

Here are a couple screenshots showing the text functions and the iPhone mobile site:

Online money management site Wesabe has launched the mobile version of their service today. The screenshots look great (see below).

Marc notes on the Wesabe blog, "...entering cash transactions from the road is a huge help. If you’re waiting for the barrista to make your favorite coffee drink, call up Wesabe Mobile and drop the cost of that drink into your accounts, and you’ll have a way to test the much-touted latte factor for yourself." In my former accounting life, getting the client to actually enter the transactions was the absolute hardest point. Being able to zap a transaction from anywhere should help keeping the books much easier. Sitting at your favorite pizzeria for a slice, zap it. At Aveda for a spa treatment, zap it. Etc.

Marc also notes that you must have a SSL-browser on your mobile device to use the service. Unlike the SMS options offered by the competition listed below, Marc says that SMS isn't secure.

As I noted in my interview recap with Marc Hudlund, what I like about Wesabe is that I decide how much to trust them. I can give them the keys to the kingdom or only upload what I feel is appropriate and still get basically the full benefits of the system.

From what I can tell, Geezeo offers sms-based account information, Mint offers SMS alerts and SpendView currently has no mobile functionality. Today's announcement moves Wesabe to the head of the pack with regards to mobile access.

Yesterday I had a chance to sit down with Wesabe co-founder Marc Hedlund. Marc was in town for today's portfolio summit at Union Square Ventures. Let's dispense with the formalities first: Wesabe was not named after the Japanese root vegetable, that's Wasabi. Marc said the name comes from the spanish language as is a combination of "we" and "you". It's sexy.

I always look forward to meeting startups and developers for our conversations but this one I was really looking forward to. I have written several times about the other two big startups in the financial space: Mint and Geezeo and being a former accountant, the personal financial space has a tremendous amount of room for growth. My biggest issue with the other two is around security. Geezeo has more features than Mint but I have the same security concerns with both. Unfortunately Mint has some interesting corporate goals and has ignored most of my questions but I am still open to a discussion with them as well.

Now let's focus on Wesabe. We began by discussing marketing plans and Marc noted that the majority of traffic to Wesabe comes from Google which is stronger over time than a blog post on a top blog because Googlers actually need his product each time vs. a small handful from a blog post. Wesabe has a very strong community.

The founders spent two years interviewing over 1500 people about their spending habits and what they would be looking for in an online tool. Their goal was to build something robust because, "If it's the same as Quicken, why not just use Quicken?" Wesabe is an online financial management tool. It uses tagging to help organize your charges.

Most of our time together was discussing security. Where Wesabe differs from Mint/Geezeo is that Wesabe allows you to "decide how much to trust Wesabe". What this means is that you have a choice to either plug in your logins or you can upload the exported files from your bank Web site. I like this a lot. Their application for logins also works very differently than the others. It's a desktop app (or Firefox addon) in which you put your logins into it and after logging in, Wesabe exports the files and then it works the same as if you upload the files yourself. All login info is stored on your desktop pc and not on the remote servers. They have a data bill of rights for their customers.

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