Banking officials are calling it the world's first ever social media-fueled run on banks, and officials say that the misinformation campaign may have been a deliberate attempt to destabilize Latvia amidst the ongoing European debt crisis.

Typically, news stories originate from several different information sources when they spread among social network users, but Orgnet.com's graphic of the Swedbank run shows all the information going back to one main source. Update: Orgnet.com has identified the main source in the graphic as Swedbank and its efforts to quell rumors on Twitter.

From the graphic: "The nodes are Twitter users, mostly in Latvia. Links are drawn between two nodes who RT'ed or @ messaged each other. The time period is December 6-12, 2011."

Twitter's rumor mill spinning out of control isn't a new story. But this appears to be the first time it disrupted a financial institution, which could result in serious consequences. According to a Swedebank representative quoted by Marketwatch, "authorities may bring legal charges against the persons spreading the rumors, as such activity is illegal in the country."

Huge opaque markets are about to become transparent because of new regulations and that means a whole lot of new data available for analysis. Scalable processing of that data will require outsourcing, giving birth to new industries. Millions of people will need to be trained to deal with all this. Below, my notes from this fascinating panel discussion.

Big Data In Banking

Moderated by:
Abhishek Mehta (Tresata)
Panelists:
Roy E. Lowrance (New York University), Richie Prager (BlackRock), Allen Weinberg (McKinsey)
11:20am Wednesday, 09/21/2011

My notes...

Richie Prager: Dodd Frank Consumer Protection Act changes the OTC derivatives market. It was the domain of large financial institutions, measured in hundreds of billions of notional dollars.

Everything in that market that was opaque will now have to execute contracts with transparency, all the executions will get turned into data and all the risk is reported to regulators. What was very opaque will now be a transparent market, reams of new data available.

Allen Weinberg (McKinsey): All kinds of businesses will need to learn to work with this data, new providers will need to emerge to serve them. They have to get outside of silos, it will be a dramatic opening up. Banks won't have enough capital to build it all themselves, it will have to be an open source model to build the infrastructure.

Abhishek Mehta (Tresata): Do you think our industry will embrace mining of data outside our own walls?

Lawrence: As new data sets become available, everyone will need access to them, cost will become an issue - outsourced providers can scale and you can't.

Prager: Data providers are already here and big, third-party data is already key. It's a growing space.

Weinberg: New interesting companies include data cleansing, data management - and how do we get a single view of the customer? New names you haven't heard of will become household names very quickly just because of the serious need for their services.

Weinberg: Most of the companies in banking grew through silos and thus haven't had a good single view of customer. Even if you had the data in one place - how do we manage then to execute? If we had visibility and transparency into the exact credit on every distinct loan, if you can see the whole customer then it's no longer a mystery and we can avoid the mistaken assumptions of the past.

Abhishek Mehta (Tresata) is moderating this conversation very well and is a model I should follow for moderating panels like this myself.

Prager: For institutional investors, we manage over $3 trillion and we believe in analytics so much that we've created a dedicated research staff. We actively use tools to understand everything from trading cost analytics to capacity of a certain trade, performance metrics for our traders. Now it's about how you create Alpha opportunities to outperform based on that data.

Lowrance: You have to crunch the MBA stuff, figure out how to use advanced number crunchers, make use of them. Capital One had the very best analytics and they believed them. They executed based on that. That's the hard part.

Weinberg: It's well developed to see what the best data is, run it through intelligent analysis, though there is some concern about getting lost in the model. On the retail side, though, people are stuck to see where is the value? You still need to sell a single thing to a single customer. We need the ability to test quickly; small offers, tested quickly, then ramp up. We need to know what the total size of the pie is - then we'll see the money start pouring in. You get sophisticated, expensive tools and a lot of people sign up but don't use it a lot. First people will make a lot of money, then it will become commoditized, but we're at the beginning of that curve.

Lowrance: Key training opportunity is with middle managers. You have to get them trained and aware of the possibilities.

In addition, the financial tools now available in the Citi iPad app seem to take inspiration from similar online services, like Intuit's money management suite at Mint.com, for example. And, says the company, the iPad app's progress won't stop here. It will be under constant evolution, getting "smarter" over the coming weeks, and may even help users manage offers and rewards in the future.

When Citi approached the iPad, explains Tracey Weber, Citi's head of North American Internet and Mobile Banking, it did so thinking of it as not just another mobile offering. "We view the iPad as an opportunity to engage with customers in a much deeper way," says Weber.

People use tablets in differently than they do their mobile smartphones, she says. They often engage with them in the evenings, reading magazines, books, and newspapers, playing games, and watching videos. This engaged type of use is what gave the bank the opportunity to provide its own more deeply engaging experience via the iPad.

Analyzing Your Finances, How Very Mint-Like!

Instead of simply providing company info and access to banking transaction tools, the app delves deeper into your finances, with rich, interactive charts highlighting things like cash flow, balance trends, overall debt and more. There's even a section where you can compare your personal data to the aggregated, anonymous data of other Citi customers by a number of factors, including income level, household type, location and so on.

Being able to dive into your own finances like this, visualize trends, and make comparisons is one of the primary functions of the online financial management service Mint.com.  Of course, Mint can track more than just bank accounts, covering everything from investments to auto loans. But such deep data analysis is still a rarity among banking institutions, which is why it's so interesting to see what Citi is doing here. Even banking giant Bank of America only offers a fairly traditional iPad application, which just launched last month.

Future Offers/Rewards Platform?

Meanwhile, Citi comes out of the gate ahead, and is now planning to incorporate even more features, most of which it can't talk about too much. But Citi is a launch partner with Google on Google Wallet, the new mobile wallet service designed for Android handsets. And Weber says that the company sees a "huge opportunity" in the offers/rewards space, which incidentally is a feature of the new Google service.

While there's no direct announcement related to an forthcoming offers/rewards feature within Citi's mobile apps, iPad or otherwise, it only makes sense that the company would one day port the rewards programs it now operates online to these newer form factors. It could then take advantage of the unique opportunities that come from being on mobile: access to a user's real-time location, SMS text messaging, and more.

Banking just got a little less boring, we'd say. We're staying tuned.

Since 2007, mobile banking has more than doubled in use. According to analyst firm Forrester, this trend will continue, with usage again doubling by 2015, but analyst Emmet Higdon says that a few changes and realizations need to be made for mobile banking to really catch on.

According to Higdon, mobile banking lacks "any clear differentiated functionality" and "appeals most strongly to those consumers already inclined to use the mobile channel." To really gain adoption, says Higdon, "U.S. banks will need to enhance today's functionality significantly."

"To reach one in five US adults, as Forrester predicts mobile banking will do by 2015," writes Higdon, "U.S. banks will need to enhance today's functionality significantly to create a unique value proposition that resonates with both online and offline consumers."

Higdon suggests that banks introduce innovative features like mobile remote deposit, make common activities even simpler to do by using mobile apps, and use the unique characteristics of mobile devices (such as GPS coordinates) to offer additional functionality. Why would banks want to get people accessing their accounts on the go? It's all about the bucks, of course. With the current offerings, writes Higdon, "banks are not realizing the full benefit of switching customers to cheaper servicing channels, but instead are seeing cannibalization of one low-cost channel (online) by another (mobile)."

What do you want to see in your mobile banking app? Does an augmented reality-style ATM search pique your interest or would you rather deposit checks via camera?

"The real ROI from mobile banking will come from engaging the 40% of US consumers who today do not bank online," concludes Higdon. "Simply replicating today's online banking functionality will not get the job done."

With the new "FanConnect" platform, announced at PayPal's Developer Conference yesterday, businesses can connect with consumers on both Facebook and up-and-coming location-based network Foursquare. All the customer has to do is wave their phone near the store's accompanying NFC reader.

For consumers, the Bling Nation platform is easy enough to use - a sticker placed on the back of their mobile phone turns the device into a NFC-enabled communications device. NFC, or "near field communications," is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 4-inch distance.

NFC is positioned as one of the technologies that may eventually replace the credit card, as it can handle data transfer for financial transactions without having to swipe a physical plastic card through a reader. Although Bling Nation embeds NFC technology into stickers, many mobile phones worldwide ship with the technology included. Apple has also filed several patents related to NFC and hired a well-known NFC expert, moves which hint that the company may one day introduce the technology into the iPhone.

In Bling Nation's case, a point-of-sale system isn't required to use the NFC tags. A base station is provided to merchants for free upon sign up and is plugged into a wall outlet. Bling Nation takes a cut of the processing costs, claiming its merchants can save up to 50% in processing fees over traditional methods. Payments can then be processed by PayPal (hence the announcement at PayPal's event), but Bling Nation can also work directly with banks. Bling Nation is also now a part of PayPal's iPhone app, the company just announced.

FanConnect: "Liking" at Check Out

With FanConnect, businesses can get access to detailed analytics on their customers, allowing them to target their promotions and marketing efforts to select groups of consumers, reports NFC news site, NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

Customers equipped with the so-called "Bling Tag" can "like" a business on Facebook, post rewards to their Facebook page, redeem discounts and promotions and even check in on Foursquare.

Facebook employees, not surprisingly, are fans of the company and have been issued stickers to use in Palo Alto, CA and other areas where the trial is underway. FanConnect itself will debut in Palo Alto, San Francisco and San Jose next month and will later roll out to other areas in the U.S. early next year.

Lest you think that Bling Nation is just one of those crazy ideas the folks in California have come up with - check out the team behind this enterprising startup: its advisory board includes John Reed, a former chairman of Citibank and of the New York Stock Exchange and Jeff Stiefler, a former chairman of Digital Insight and a former president of American Express. Meanwhile, co-CEOs Wences Casares and Meyer Malka founded Banco Lemon, a Brazilian retail bank, and Patagon, the largest online brokerage in Latin America, reports NFC World.

Stickers are only necessary for those of us (read: most of the U.S.) without NFC-equipped mobile phones. Bling Nation's hardware will work with any NFC phone when those become more readily available.

Not all identity theft is through electronic means. Although some of the incidents include cyber fraud, there are still plenty of cases where physical theft, including lost and stolen wallets and checkbooks, is a factor.

But when fighting the ever-growing identity theft problem, technology gives financial institutions an edge. However, leaving the battle entirely in the hands of banks may not be the solution. Despite the anti-fraud technologies and methods financial institutions employ, their customers may be the most important and effective factor in preventing theft. Says James Van Dyke, president and founder of Javelin, "Customers can be just as effective...because one out of two fraud cases is first detected by the customer."

With the new technology from Clickatell SMS Receipts, customers can either verify or cancel transactions as they occur in real-time. If fraud is detected, it will be spotted almost instantly.

Clickatell's solution isn't the first example of SMS technology being used in this manner - earlier this year Barclays Bank implemented a similar service. But Clickatell is already being put to good use. E-Wallet provider Moneybookers is using the service, as is Santam, S1 Corporation, and First National Bank of South Africa. In addition to this fraud prevention service, Clickatell also partners with financial institutions to provide SMS-based banking which allows for balance inquiries, fund transfers, and person-to-person payment services. This sort of technology offers more than just modern-day convenience - it also lets people take advantage of banking services from anywhere in the world, even when they're far away from a branch or ATM.

Achuthan and Rabeedin did not have an easy route to success. Initially ridiculed by parents and schoolmates, the two struck out on their own to prove that they could achieve their goals. Unfortunately, the first banking venture from the duo, Mobeo Technologies, was not a success. With that project, the two had developed low-cost banking terminals dubbed "Personal Banking Machines" which used fingerprint readers and mobile PINs. The operation was shut down after a year due to unfavorable market conditions, regulations, and issues with hardware distribution.

Unfettered by the initial failure, the entrepreneurs chalked up Mobeo as a learning experience and moved on. Their new venture, CashNxt Technologies (web site is not fully functional), was launched in partnership with companies that already had similar low-cost banking devices for the poor.

Traditional banks don't set up ATMs in remote villages due to huge operational costs and poor connectivity. Cashnxt works around those obstacles by allowing service providers to use their network on a pay-per-use basis without any capital investment or additional infrastructure. Through a partnership with four banks out of Kannur, Cashnxt was able to deploy ten kiosks in parts of India.

Mobile Phone Transactions

As a customer, if you and a vendor are a member of the Cashnxt network, you can conduct transactions using your mobile phones. The merchant dials CashNxt's IVR number, enters their PIN and transaction amount, and then hears a high pitch sound on their mobile phone. The customer does the same - calls the IVR number, enters their PIN and hears a high pitch sound. The two phones are then brought together, held close enough for CashNxt to encrypt and decrypt the sounds. The transaction is then confirmed via SMS. (You can see how this works in this YouTube video.)

Using Cashnxt ATMs

Customers who want to make a transaction using an ATM encounter similar audio mechanisms as they do when mobile banking. The ATMs are fitted with audio systems that produce the high pitched sounds needed when transactions are made. Customers dial the IVR number, confirm their PIN and then hold their mobile phone up to the ATM. The transaction can then be completed and the customer can withdraw money. This system eliminates the need for debit and credit cards entirely.

Challenges Ahead

Using high pitch sounds to authenticate transactions could lead to high-tech hacks. As the system is relatively new, having just launched in December, it's still unknown how foolproof it may be.

Cashnxt Technologies is a 25-person self-funded venture founded byAnish Achuthan and Rameena Rabeedin. You can reach them via email at achuthan.anish AT cashnxt.net. More info about the company can be found at goergo.in.

In addition to displaying account balances, this new gadget, now available for download from Fidelity Labs, can also be configured to display alerts on certain account-related activities, including trade notifications and price trigger alerts. Customers can choose to either add the Secure Gadget as a standalone gadget or they can click a button to add a customized Fidelity Tab to their iGoogle. The tab includes the gadget itself, plus two RSS feeds from Fidelity: Fidelity Investor's Weekly and Fidelity Investment Insight Podcast.

Fidelity iGoogle tab (click to view larger):

To use the gadget, customers log in using their SSN or Customer ID and PIN, as they would do online. That information is not saved on Google's servers on any other 3rd party servers, says Fidelity.

The Fidelity Labs web site states that they developed the gadget, but it looks to us like it came from WorkLight, an enterprise 2.0 startup whose banking 2.0 survey data we reviewed earlier this year. At that time, the survey results showed that nearly half of the respondents said they would use web 2.0 tools if offered by their current bank. We also took note of the secure banking gadgets they had under development - gadgets that greatly resemble this one from Fidelity - which we considered to be very promising technology.

The release of Fidelity's gadget may hint at the beginnings of a new trend in banking - making banking 2.0 mainstream. Along with numerous web 2.0 services for managing finances, many of today's banking customers can manage their money from their mobile phones while other customers are receiving personalized recommendations on their iPhones, as well. However, none of the services offered so far have the potential for mainstreaming banking 2.0 the way a Google homepage gadget could. It's already a technology most everyone is familiar with and it's being offered by the financial institution itself, which should help customers feel comfortable about its security. We hope more financial institutions will start offering gadgets of their own in the near future.

Explosive Growth

In Q3 2008, VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media Divison's mobile messaging networks enabled more than 58.3 billion messages per day to travel through their pipes...10% more than in the previous quarter and up from 280 million per day in Q3. Based on these record-breaking numbers, VeriSign projects that their mobile messaging networks will enable close to 200 billion total messages by the end of the year.

Enterprises and financial institutions have seen growing numbers of mobile messages sent, too. From Q3 2007 to Q3 2008, the total number of messages delivered rose from 129 to 227 million - a 115% increase.

Much of that activity comes from SMS's new position as the preferred platform for mobile banking. VeriSign's Mobile Banking platform, which includes seven of the top ten banking brands and three of the top five credit card companies, has grown 35% since last quarter alone.  

Mobile messaging, as defined by VeriSign, isn't just SMS, though. They take into account a number of different types of messages, including the following:

• SMS - Short Message Service. SMS is the most common form of mobile messaging, also referred to as "text" messaging.
• ICSMS - Inter-carrier Short Message Service. ICSMS messages are text messages exchanged between carrier networks.
• MMS - Multimedia Messaging Service. MMS allows users to send multimedia messages that include images, video and audio.
• ICMMS - Inter-carrier Multimedia Messaging Service. ICMMS messages are multimedia messages exchanged between carrier networks.
• P2P Messages - Person to person messages, or messages sent from one mobile user to another.
• A2P Messages - Application to person messages, or application-generated content such as news alerts, ring tones, promotional video clips, and enterprise messages that are sent to mobile users.

It's interesting that even as the iPhone and other app-filled devices grow in popularity, when it comes to getting information quickly, we're still turning to the mobile message - and now more than ever before. Will this trend ever level off as more people switch over to the smartphones whose "real internet" experiences no longer require text-based workarounds for getting the information needed? By the looks of these numbers, it doesn't appear that will be the case.

Image credit: enV by Nesster

Online money management service Wesabe and the UK newspaper giant The Telegraph have entered a partnership to offer co-branded tools on the Telegraph website. It's a daring move, we can't help but admire it. We can't help but wonder how users will feel about it too, though.

We like this idea and it's clear that many people want to use online services to monitor and manage their finances. There's no doubt that many of the Telegraph's tens of millions of monthly visitors wouldn't have found out about Wesabe any other way. It does sound like a great convenience, as the company says, to be able to manage money in the same place that you get your news.

We suspect that there will be richer integration of Wesabe into Telegraph pages in the future. We can imagine, for example, news recommendations based on a reader's investment history. Something like the recent LinkedIn/NYTimes partnership.

Still, we wonder how comfortable people will be with this particular choice of partners.

Do You Want the Newspaper to Have a Direct Line to Your Finances?

Privacy is a touchy concern and it's generally assumed that personal finances are one of the most private matters in peoples' lives. None the less, online personal finance services like Wesabe and competitor Mint are growing fast. The value they are able to add on top of existing banking options online is substantial, though there may not be a big barrier to entry if established banks decide to offer similar features.

Partnership options are always interesting, and technology plays in finance are often fascinating - but the newspaper? We're not sure that an institution founded on the premise that it tells everyone everything is really the best choice to do personal finance through.

We like the idea of newspapers working with data (see what The Guardian is doing), but not necessarily our personal financial data - even if it is worked with in anonymous aggregate. Are we alone in that thinking? We doubt it.

What about readers? Are you comfortable, excited even, with the prospect of doing personal finance through your local newspaper? We suspect our readers are disproportionately uninterested in such things as you are more likely to know about these services independently. Still, isn't there something a little crazy about this?

Readers interested in learning more about this sector should check out our recent podcast edition of ReadWriteTalk on the topic, with executives from Wesabe, Mint and Tip'd as guests.

At the same time, however, Compete's survey also found that almost 45% of respondents who use online banking think that using a wireless device would be 'useful' or 'very useful,' while only 12% think it would be 'not at all useful.'

This data from Compete also fits in well with a survey from WorkLight we reported about in June, which stated that 48% of consumers between the ages of 18-34 would use secure gadgets for personal banking if their bank offered it.

Judging from these data points, mobile banking can clearly look forward to robust growth, especially once consumers get more comfortable with using the Internet on their mobile devices.

Mobile Banking Has to be Easy

The poster-child for online banking in the U.S. so far is the mobile site of the Bank of America, which has close a one million active users, 2/3rds of which are under the age of 35.

One aspect of mobile banking that the Compete study doesn't take into account is that a lot of banks simply don't offer very compelling mobile sites yet. Unless the experience on a mobile device is as frictionless and simple as possible, consumers will wait to check their account status at home.

To do so, however, you have to give Mint the login data for all your accounts, which raises alarms for some users, especially because Mint is still a relatively new entity in the finance business.

As we pointed our earlier this month, Mint's users are relatively young, with a median age of 28, but by adding investment accounts and the new IRA calculator, Mint should be able to slowly become more mainstream, especially in these tough economic times. In the future, Mint also plans to allow for bill payment and stock trades through its site, but for now, it is only a data aggregator.

If you would like to read more about our take on personal finance in the cloud and a look at Mint's competitors, have a look at our comparison of the top 10 personal money management sites on the Internet.

The proliferation of these types of apps would have you believe there's a big demand for web-based financial tools. But is there really? We would hope so, considering how their advanced technology can provide detailed analysis about your money (or lack thereof). However, we secretly wondered if the only people logging in to sites like Mint.com and the like are the young kids of Gen Y. Do adults with mortgages, credit card debt, and 401Ks even know how to use these tools?

To find out who's using the banking 2.0 tools and why, we started with Mint.com, who recently gave us a peek into their company's data. As VentureBeat noted, Mint.com's nearly 500,000 users are cutting down on expenses - they've spent an average of $300 less per month in August than in January this year, a 6% drop. However, they believed that early users of this site and those like it were sure to be younger and more tech-savvy. We believe they are tech-savvy, too, since it does require the use of computer and browser, and we know that not everyone can handle such complications. But we wondered: how young are the users really? 

Mint.com Is Slowly Aging

Although Mint.com doesn't require you to fill out anything more than a zip code and email address in order to sign up, they've conducted multiple user surveys in order to get a grasp on their company's demographic data. The end result of those surveys has given them a good idea of who uses the site.

Mint.com admits that they, as a web company, did indeed "launch young." In the beginning, their audience was primarily Generation Y. However, over the past year, their user base has been gradually aging. At launch, the average age of the user on the site was 27, the same as their CEO at the time, Aaron Patzer. Today, the average age is 28, only a year higher, a year later. So are they really growing up?

Maybe they're not aging overall as a site, but when you look at the breakdowns by age range, you can see that some of the older age groups are trending upwards. Look at the 40-year-olds and up, for example - there is some growth to be seen there. Below, you can see a chart that tracks changes between September, 2007 and July, 2008:

Another trend that points to the aging of Mint users is the fact that more users now report owning their primary residence. In December 2007, that number was 39%. Today, 43% report that they own their own home.

Why It Works: You Can Actually Save Money

When we first reported Mint.com's announcement that they had saved users over $100 million while managing $12 billion in transactions, some of you were skeptical. But the company is maintaining those numbers are accurate. This is in part to due the fact that when you take into consideration the number of accounts maintained at Mint (checking, savings, credit card, 401K, mortgages, car loans, etc.) and the number of users (now about half a million), it isn't very hard to push that number up. However, it's also high thanks to Mint.com's wealthier-than-the-average-American user base. As of July 2008, the user's average income level was over $100,000/year and 39% had investment assets over $50,000.

But that's not to say that Mint is only a tool for the wealthy tech elite - anyone can save money with the service. According to a company representative, 1 out of every 10 Mint.com users changes accounts after signing up for the service. This means that those users are tapping into Mint.com's feature where the service recommends them a better offer. For example, a person with a credit card who charges a lot of airline tickets might be offered a different card with travel points. Another person might be recommended to switch from their Bank of America savings account to ING where they would get a better rate, perhaps. And yet another person might be recommended a credit card with a lower rate. And don't be mistaken - those recommendations aren't simply taking into account the introductory period where the credit card company slashes the rate to entice you, but looks at the credit card rate over the course of an entire year before determining whether it would really save the user money.

What About The Other Startups In This Space?

Given Mint.com's user base of around 500,000 and their traffic numbers, they are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, personal finance/money management web service. They achieved this growth through smart advertising campaigns that reached out to the mainstream, especially women, in magazines like SELF, Real Simple, and Reader's Digest. That appeared to have worked - today, 40% of new users on the site are women - that's a much higher number than back in 2007, when only 15% of the users were female.

So, what about the others? We reached out to some of the other banking 2.0 sites to see what sort of data they had, too. Out of the ten apps we previously featured, only Wesabe, Rudder, Geezeo, Xero, and Expensr had data on hand. iThryv is still preparing to launch and the rest did not respond to our request.

Here's how those sites compared:

Wesabe

• Over 100,000 users
• 56% male, 44% female
• Median income: $60-80K
• Age: 60% are 30 or younger
• Misc. - 75% have a college degree or higher, 43% are married

Rudder

• The company just launched at DEMO last month, but already have 15,000 users.
• They don't collect demographic info.

Geezeo

• 30,000 users
• 54% male, 46% female
• 30% 18 - 34 years old
• 38% 35 - 49 years old
• Site attracts less affluent users
• More info here

Xero

• Xero has 2200 paying customers
• Their number of customers has grown 132% since March 31, 2008
• Xero will not disclose demographic data.

Expensr

• 25,000 users
• Users in their 20's: 66%
• Users in their 30's: 24%

Great Tools, Now If Only Banks Would Tell People They Existed...

Overall, we can tell there are some general trends here - banking 2.0 sites are still young, but are starting to gain traction among older users. More women are starting to use these applications which makes sense, give that they are typically the ones holding the household purse strings.

However, we think that there should be more of a push by financial institutions to recommend these types of tools to their customers, instead of sticking with the old stand-bys that include desktop software applications like Quicken. As Alistair Newton, Research VP and Industry Services Director at Gartner noted earlier this year, "with banks coming under increasing pressure to deliver a range of short-term cost savings, the ways that banks interact with their customers will become increasingly important in managing costs downwards. There are a variety of ways in which banks can help customers save money and better manage their exposure to debt while saving the bank money by encouraging greater use of self-service applications."

Gartner also maintains that communities such as Mint.com, Wesabe, and Geezeo can be of long-term benefit to banks, especially as they help the more debt-exposed clients to manage their funds more effectively.

We couldn't agree more. Our hope is that in light of the country's economic meltdown, these apps will get the push they deserve.

Image credit: Cash, courtesy of: spcbrass

These sites aren't just simplified versions of our former desktop apps, either. Instead, they offer a number of features that take advantage of their "always on" status. Forget downloading updates and typing in your transactions line-by-line, these new banking 2.0 sites can offer you better insight into your financial situation with no additional effort on your part beyond just logging in.

Mint

Mint.com may be the most popular of the online banking apps today...or perhaps it's just the most hyped. The site currently claims to serve nearly 400,000 users, manages over $12 billion in transactions, and has saved $100 million+ for its users. On Mint.com, you can manage your bank account, credit card accounts, loans, brokerage and investment accounts, and more. The site also provides guides that can help you make big financial decisions like buying a new car or home. The feature which makes Mint unique is their ability to scan through your bank account and credit card transactions in order to help you find savings. They do this by matching you up with offers for new credit cards with lower rates or by negotiating a lower rate with your current company.

Wesabe

Wesabe takes what's normally a private activity - financial management - and makes it social. Like other online banking apps, Wesabe lets you see all your bank accounts and credit cards in one place. You can categorize your transactions and see spending and earning summaries. Where Wesabe is different is that it takes your data, anonymizes it, and shares it with the Wesabe community. That aggregate data is then analyzed for patterns and those results are shared with everyone. For example, Wesabe can show the cost of an average transaction at a particular merchant.

Geezeo

Geezeo is very much like Mint.com in that it offers a centralized site to access all your financial accounts including banking, credit cards, loans, etc. Where they are a bit different is in their community aspect. Instead of anonymized data, they offer community-focused areas like Groups and Goals where you can socialize and learn from others who have the same financial concerns that you do. Geezeo also stands out for letting you upload your own bank account data, if you so desire, instead of having to set up accounts to upload into Geezeo automatically. Transactions can also be manually entered. Geezeo offers a mobile app too, that lets you check your balances and available credit from your mobile phone.

Expensr

Expensr is an online personal finance application which was recently acquired by recommendation engine Strands. The site is now being integrated with Strands' recommendation technology to produce a new product, moneyStrands, which analyzes your financial history in order to recommend products and services you may find appealing. The site lets you import your bank account files into their system using a secure uploader. The app will then auto-categorize your transactions. You're presented with a variety of pie graphs and bar graphs that break down your spending to show you where your money is going. You can compare yourself to your peers by tagging yourself with keywords like "young professional" or "college student" and then look at your spending habits versus the average from that particular group. Expensr also offers budgeting tools which can help you plan for the future.

moneyStrands

After acquiring Expensr, Strands has been working to combine its technology with their own recommendation engine. The end result is moneyStrands, still in private beta. Ultimately, the site will offer you a way to aggregate your financial information in one place and see instant snapshots of your finances. Recommendation technologies will present you with services you may be interested in and you can anonymously compare your habits with others. At the moment, Expensr and moneyStrands appear as separate web sites, but perhaps they will become more integrated in the future.

Xero

Where Mint.com may appeal to former Quicken users, Xero.com appeals to former Quickbooks users. This kiwi startup offers daily bank reconciliation as well as invoicing, reporting, A/R, A/P, expense claims, and other bookkeeping tasks. For those considering the switch, a handy page on the Xero web site lets you show your accountant exactly what Xero can and cannot do so that you can analyze whether or not their service is right for you.

Rudder

Rudder made their official debut at the recent DEMO conference in San Diego. Unlike the other apps reviewed here, Rudder focuses on bills more than banking. With Rudder, you can determine how much money you have available to spend while still paying all your bills. The app aggregates your banking and credit card accounts, but the focus here is not on what's taken place in the past (historical trends, spending habits, etc.). Instead, Rudder focuses on the future by letting you know what's left in your account for spending and saving. The best feature about Rudder, though, is that it doesn't force you to log into their site to get this information. The app delivers balances, transactions, and upcoming bills directly to your email inbox.

Green Sherpa

Another app which debuted at DEMO was Green Sherpa. At first glance, the app appears to be very much like its competitors with bank account aggregation, reconciliation, and budgeting tools. However, Green Sherpa offers a combination of features which appeal to those who are making the transition from desktop apps. The app lets you input transactions manually and offers a more advanced cash flow projection than Mint.com does. However, the app's most unique feature is its sharing aspect. You can choose to give other people (like a family member or accountant) access to your data. While that makes Green Sherpa stand out, they've entered a crowded space where competitors already have solid leads, so it may not be enough to win people over.

Buxfer

Buxfer is another app offering a home to all your accounts. It will auto-download your data, categorize your transactions, and help you budget. Buxfer addresses the privacy concerns that many have with banking 2.0 sites by integrating with Google Gears. The app uses Google Gears to store your account login information on your own computer, only syncing back the data collected, not your private credentials. They also offer a groups feature which will appeal those sharing expenses with others, like roommates, for example. You can use Buxfer to track and settle IOUs with others through the site. This makes the app more appealing to a younger crowd, as does its mobile integration. You can access Buxfer via SMS, Twitter, email, on on the mobile web.

Shryk

Shryk is a company which just launched at the TechCrunch50 conference. Their two-pronged approach is designed to help kids achieve financial literacy. The first part of that approach is a service called iThryv which teaches kids about earning, saving, and managing money. This product is sold through banks and credit unions and is also available free to educational institutions. The second part of the Shyrnk platform is WeProsper.org. This is an online community where teachers, schools, and financial institutions can come together and develop new tools and methods to promote financial literacy.

Security Concerns?

For obvious reasons, some people will find the thought of banking in the cloud frightening. This is, after all, data that requires a high level of security. However, with banks themselves offering online services and bill pay, people are beginning to see that "online" doesn't necessarily mean "insecure." In fact, having your banking data stored on servers run by a business may actually be more secure than having a Quicken file saved on your laptop, a device which could be easily lost or stolen. Also, because home users don't tend to back up their data as often as they should, a hard drive crash could mean a complete loss.

Challenges

Although there are a number of sites to choose from in this competitive space, there are still some challenges to overcome. For one, because almost all these companies are U.S.-based, the banks they support are U.S.-based as well. This leaves potential international customers without a way to participate. Some of the companies state in their F.A.Q.'s that they plan to add support for more banks worldwide in the future, but that's only likely to occur if the company can first gain a foothold here in the U.S.

Another issue with these sites is that there is almost no support for small community banks and credit unions. Unless the site allows you to import your transactions manually (which somewhat defeats the purpose), you're out of luck. Why is that almost all major banks are available yet so few of the smaller banks are? This is the type of service that could help keep smaller banks more competitive with their big bank counterparts, so you would think some of them would be interested. Is the burden on the banking 2.0 sites to help smaller banks get online or is it up to those institutions themselves? Perhaps the banking 2.0 sites need to be working a way to automate the import of transactions from any bank, regardless of whether or not the institution itself supports the site. The first company to come up with a solution like that could really set themselves apart from the rest of the pack and gain a whole new set of customers in the process.

Conclusion

Banking 2.0 is still very much an emerging technology trend. Yet with the young generation of digital natives now entering the workforce and starting their careers, you can be sure that they will have an impact on this space. They will expect their banks to support not only online banking but also other online money management tools such as these. This is not a generation that's known for their brand loyalty, so you can bet that they will be all too happy to change banks if they decide they want to use one of these services and their bank isn't supported.

Banking 2.0 represents only one aspect of the growing trend that is cloud computing. Just as other desktop software is being threatened by new online apps, desktop financial management software is threatened as well. These banking sites go up against expensive and unwieldy desktop software while offering their services for free and finding you savings. In our current economy, that activity gives banking 2.0 the potential to go mainstream fast.

One of the best things about using web apps is that you don't need to download updates, install new versions, or go buy a new boxed product every year or so. However, in Mint's case, the speed with which they innovate - they claim to implement customer-driven improvements every six weeks - meant their new features were being overlooked by their users. People who signed up to manage their bank accounts were often not aware that the site could help them manage their other accounts, too, since those features weren't offered at the time of initial registration. Calling attention to these features was the main goal of the site's redesign.

Today, the site launches with a new look and feel which brings the focus back to the major new features added to Mint since their launch: enhanced budgeting tools, the addition of brokerage and investment accounts, mortgage accounts, student loans, and auto loans. In addition, they've added six new "how to" guides that can help you with your major financial decisions. These include things like saving for retirement, paying off your student loans, buying a car, creating a personal budget, and more. The guides are the start of a new educational series for the site.

What It Looks Like

Below we have both the old version of Mint.com and the new version. Do you think the redesign is an improvement?

Before:

After:

Before (Features):

After (Features):

The New Mint: All Flash, No Substance?

For the happy U.S. customers who are able to use Mint.com, the redesign is sure to be appreciated as it really does give the site a fresh, new look and makes finding out about new features easier than before. However, Mint is still ignoring the needs of those customers who don't bank with large, national banking institutions. One of the most requested features is for Mint to allow for data uploads - that is, the importation of downloaded files be them in .QIF, .QFX, .QBO, or even .CSV or .TXT format. For those who chose to bank with smaller community banks or credit unions - a choice often made because of the typically lower fees that those institutions provide - Mint.com is not an option. That's a shame because if anyone is interested in using a service to save money, it could very well be these folks.

By keeping their niche so narrow so as to not include a good portion of the U.S. banking population, Mint.com is allowing its competitors, sites like Wesabe.com and Geezeo a big advantage. Today, both of those sites have FAQs that state "if your bank isn't available, let us know and we'll add it!" They also both support data upload. Meanwhile, Mint's FAQ, hidden away on their forums, reads "...we are adding new banks as quickly as we can," and "Mint currently doesn't support features that would allow customers to import data from another source (Quicken, Excel, etc.). We're looking to see if we can provide support for these down the road."

We hope that since Mint.com has a fresh new look now, they will focus on offering their Webby-award winning services to more people now, too.