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Honeydue<\/a> is a mobile app<\/a> that aims to reduce money-related arguments between couples by offering tools to share information on respective account balances and spending.<\/p>\n The app also lets couples stay on top of money matters in other ways, such as being able to comment on individual transactions and manage bill reminders together \u2014 so they can, in the words of co-founder Eugene Park, \u201cbe on the same page\u201d about money.<\/p>\n \u201cMy co-founder, Thien Tran, and I are pretty passionate about personal finance and helping others develop better financial habits and literacy,\u201d Park tells TechCrunch, explaining how the idea for the app came about.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we started this project both [of us] were living with our partners and arguing, from time to time, with our partners about money. And it sort of hit us \u2014 with all of these basic tools that are out, there if couples like us can\u2019t get on the same page with money then these tools really don\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n The target user is typically in the Millennial age-range \u2014 with Park noting there are some 32M Millennials now living with a partner. \u201cWe believe all of them should be co-managing their money together and certainly co-developing their financial literacy habits together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The founders surveyed 600 couples to help spec out the app\u2019s feature set, and the research threw up a few surprises \u2014 such as how much demand there was for a bill reminder facility. Sixty per cent of users who sign up to use the app now create at least one bill reminder during the onboarding process, according to Park.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were shocked,\u201d he says of this appetite for bill reminders. \u201cWe thought, maybe it\u2019s because we live in this Bay Area bubble where everything\u2019s being auto-paid, but why do people want bill reminders?<\/p>\n \u201c[W]e took a deep dive into it and I think the narrative that\u2019s emerging is\u2026 75 per cent of Americans generally are living paycheck to paycheck. And are having to make a very difficult decision of which bill to pay. And for that reason that\u2019s why they\u2019re not autopaying it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe top four banks in this country are charging $6.4BN in bank fees \u2014 whether they\u2019re late fees or overdraft fees \u2014 and so I have to imagine, I don\u2019t any data to prove this, that that money is coming from some of the most vulnerable parts of our culture,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so these folks, they\u2019re very sensitive to two things: one is the actual timing of when to pay their bills. And two, their account balances so that they don\u2019t go under certain minimums that result in monthly fees.\u201d<\/p>\n The team also found the most used existing application for couples to manage their finances together is spreadsheets \u2014 hence spying an opportunity to build something better.<\/p>\n \u201cIf financial literacy is bad in this country, spreadsheet literacy is almost as bad,\u201d says Park. \u201c18 per cent of couples that we surveyed are using spreadsheets. And it was 3x over any other app or service. And so we\u2019re setting out to build a better alternative to these spreadsheets that couples are co-managing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf nothing else we\u2019re automatically updating your balances and activity, whereas a spreadsheet can\u2019t do that,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n A key friction point the app aims to address is to enable users to choose how much information they share.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the hesitation points that we saw in a lot of the couples was that they didn\u2019t necessary want to argue about the little things,\u201d he explains. \u201cDid you take Uber vs Lyft, The number one argument we read in a study was over frivolous purchases. So a lot of couples said that they want to goal set and plan but they don\u2019t necessarily want to argue about did they make frivolous purchases. So one of the features we allow you to is we allow you to track your account balances but choose what you want to share.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you can choose which accounts you want to share, you can choose whether you just want to share the balance only. Or whether you also want to share activity and transactions as well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe looked at\u2026 existing tools like Mint.com and others, and they are generally not collaborative in nature,\u201d he adds. \u201cOne of the friction points for a lot of couples is choosing what they want to share with each other. Choosing how much of their finances that they want to delegate vs collaborate on.\u201d<\/p>\n The Honeydue app soft launched on iOS in late January and Android in March. They have around 20,000 registered users at this point. The app is currently US-only.<\/p>\n \u201cWe skew female, I believe it\u2019s 60 per cent. Which makes us relatively unique relative to other personal finance apps,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is from a generational perspective and a behavioral perspective we\u2019re seeing that Millennials are more likely to co-manage their finances together as opposed to my parents generation, my generation (X).<\/p>\n \u201cSo we did a survey of 600 couples and 75% reported that they co-manage some to all of their finances together so that is generally our target market: People that are committed to sharing financial responsibility as well as financial literacy with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n Users are typically using the app to connect and share their bank account balances \u2014 which is what the team considers \u201cour core use-case and our core pitch\/value proposition\u201d \u2014 although, interestingly, couples still choose not to share information on a portion of their accounts.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is that approximately 60 per cent of accounts are shared at some level but 40 per cent are not,\u201d notes Park. \u201cAnd so couples that are signing up for our app are exercising that privacy and autonomy.\u201d<\/p>\n Another \u201cinteresting use-case\u201d that\u2019s emerged for the app is a feature called \u201cwhat\u2019s that charge?\u201d \u2014 which lets users query each other about individual transactions.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we were noticing is that a lot of couples, before we built this app, they were looking at their bank statements and whenever they saw a transaction that they didn\u2019t recognize they would screenshot it in a mobile app and then they would MMS it to their partners and ask do you recognize this charge? And that loop was regular, was repeatedly regularly and we just thought that was so silly, so we made it easier for partners to identify these transactions and share them or ask their partner what\u2019s that charge?<\/p>\n \u201cSo we added a comment section under each transaction as well as an emoticon button. So you can flag transactions, you can express shock to a transaction with your partner or thumbs up support. We\u2019re seeing a good number of couples that are using that on a regular basis, so that\u2019s another common use-case.\u201d<\/p>\n Another feature that\u2019s proving popular aims to help couples who are trying to budget together \u2014 by allowing them to see their spending autonomically categorized.<\/p>\n Bill splitting (or \u201csharing\u201d in the app\u2019s language) is also supported, although Park says this turned out to be less popular than the founders thought it would be, with only around 5 per cent os users making use of it.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no native payment facility within the app itself either \u2014 if couples need to settle an IOY between each other Honeydue links out to PayPal or Venmo to do the actual moving of money.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you\u2019re getting into the business of helping people move money then we expose ourselves to another level of scrutiny,\u201d adds Park.<\/p>\n Currently, the app supports integrating with around 9,000 of the biggest banks in the US, via its data provider \u2014 which he describes as \u201cpretty broad coverage of the most popular banks\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cLike other personal finance tools we go through one of three major financial data providers. Generally the way it works is when you enter your credentials, it\u2019s validated with the bank and they provide us with a token and we store that token and with that token we can\u2019t do anything other than look up your balance and your transactions. and keep them up to date.\u201c<\/p>\n In terms of business model, the app is free to use \u2014 which does of course bring up the question of how they intend to monetize the visibility they\u2019re gaining into users\u2019 bank accounts and spending habits.<\/p>\n And while Park couches the privacy policy and terms of service as \u201cpretty restrictive\u201d \u2014 saying, \u201cin generally we\u2019re not allowed to sell your data to anyone, similar to Mint.com<\/a> and Credit Karma<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the eventual plan is to \u201coffer our users offers\u201d, so they will be using income and transaction\/spending data to support custom marketing of other financial services, down the line, taking a cut of any services sales as their commission.<\/p>\n \u201cEssentially we want to help guide our users to better financial products and services that we think will save them money, and we will use your data to help tailor some of these offers to you, without compromising your identity to third parties,\u201d he says, adding: \u201cIt\u2019s not at the top of our roadmap but in some point in order to keep it free we\u2019ll start testing that.\u201d<\/p>\n The Y Combinator backed startup is graduating in the accelerator\u2019s summer 2017 cohort, and will be looking to raise seed funding shortly after demo day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/N3tPIpVzIZo\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Honeydue is a mobile app that aims to reduce money-related arguments between couples by offering tools to share information on respective account balances and spending. 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