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I LOVED the wesabe downloadable data import client. The fact that I didn't have to fork over the login credentials to my financial accounts was a huge win & wh
by btucker 16y ago
I LOVED the wesabe downloadable data import client. The fact that I didn't have to fork over the login credentials to my financial accounts was a huge win & what kept me away from Mint until wesabe closed. But clearly this was not an issue for most people and hence why the simplicity of the yodlee backed solution ultimately won.
Wesabe did one very interesting thing when they launched which was that the CEO had open office hours when you could call and talk to him. They were one of the first "Web 2.0" companies to do this. I think they stopped this at some point, but I always loved the concept.
- king_jester 16y agoHanding over bank usernames and passwords in order to use Mint was the one thing I thought would be a barrier for Mint compared to Wesabe, esp. since for my banks I can't provide one (limited) credential for Mint while keeping one for myself. It's interesting that a tool like Mint, which is designed to empower people with control over their finances, asks people to give up control over their financial information and most people seem to be OK with that.
- tapp 16y agoSame. As an aside, does anyone know any banks that do offer this? It seems like a no-brainer to me to allow users a set of read-only credentials for online account access.
- mattmcknight 16y agoI don't know of any many trusted services, but I actually use Bank of America's tools to do the online budgeting thing. They built it into the site pretty well.
- dunham 16y agoA lot of banks offer OFX access, it's what stuff like Money and Quicken talk to. It's mostly read only, although I think there are a couple of banks that can do bill pay over OFX. This is pretty common knowledge if you're writing this kind of software. Some vendors, like Ameritrade use different credentials for OFX. Mint/Yodlee asked for front door passwords and security answers that give them the ability to trade securities and empty my account, rather than the OFX id/pin that would give them access to a standard API to retrieve transactions and balances. This made me seriously doubt their competence, and I never became a customer. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange for details.
- draebek 16y agoI liked Wesabe's approach to my data, period. Wesabe let me export my all of my data, and even provided an API for it. Mint, last time I used it (a long time) did not.