1. Time to fix my accounting processes for this particular business 2. This is amazing!
How do you make money?
To answer the money question, right now we actually don't make money. In the future, we think we can make $ by making intelligent recommendations i.e. "you like x and y, try signing up for Z subscription service.
I am 100% not saying you intend to scam or steal. But clearly access to my data is key to your eventual monetization plan, and this is a loss leader to get in the door. Since the ultimate plan is not stated, I have no choice but to imagine it, and nothing I can think of warms my heart.
The ability to feed your service with something like a periodic manual export from Mint (assuming such a thing is possible) would go a long way toward reassuring me.
Again, the core idea seems fantastic, and could save many people real money, including myself.
We've definitely discussed the idea of a manual export/import - we may get to that in the future.
>it's moreso to make intelligent recommendations...
That is exactly what monetizing data is!
What is your business model? Why not charge a one-time $10 fee up front to build trust, and revenue?
There's a few ways we can go for revenue. Here's an example: Since we know what subscriptions are popular, and we can have verified ratings on those subscriptions, we'll be able to make recommendations. For example, "You're paying $12 for Pandora. People seem to be happier with Spotify, and your friends love it. Give it a try!" Using those referrals, we'd get a cut of the subscription revenue from Spotify.
Edit:// Sorry i just saw you answered that already. Fucking banks. Trying since years to find a local one with a read only api with no luck yet. They just offered me read/write APIs based on expensive business accounts...
I asked them what would happen if i did this, they told me this is reason enough to sue me.
How did you arrive at that number? Is that number advertised anywhere on the Plaid.com website?
Do you have to be a paying customer to pry that information (i.e. list of banks they support) out of them?
What does your service offer that scrolling down my bank statement won't already achieve? There is already a proven barrier of laziness here, why doesn't that also exist for the process of downloading and utilizing your service?
The point is, you shouldn't HAVE to look at your bank statement to find this stuff. We do it for you, and we keep an eye on things for you. If you want to make sure you're not charged again, just set an alert. No need to check your bank statement.. just wait for an email from us.
I'm loving this trend of services to save me money (Paribus is one other example that I love). However, I too am concerned about handing financial information over to a third party. I'd love to hear the business model.
What would a workaround for this look like?
One idea I'd recommend is to look at what the user is subscribing to and monitor for when deals are available and alert the user to that. For example Xbox Live is usually $60/year, however there are frequent sales (Amazon, eBay, etc) that offer discounts to $35/year. Similarly with music subscriptions, etc.
There's your revenue model as well. Because you're saving the user money they can kick you back a few bucks (maybe a percentage of the savings).
