AUSTIN, Texas -
"MoneyTracker is a step beyond what the rest of the online banking world has to offer," said Kent White, vice president marketing at the $400-million CU.
Amplify offered MoneyTracker to members in April, allowing them to view past, current and pending online banking transactions from multiple payees and payers. Members can click to categorize the transactions and create spending goals and reports, all within the single sign-on of homebanking.
But what sets MoneyTracker ahead of the competition-beyond an innovative search feature-is that the application can be dropped on top of any third-party homebanking platform via an Extensible Markup Language interface, according to Andrew Taylor, chief technology officer at Amplify's CUSO, Jwaala. "Credit unions don't have to depend on Intuit or Digital Insight for personal finance software," he said.
About 15% of Amplify's online members are using MoneyTracker, "a very healthy start for a program that's only 90 days old," White said.
According to White, MoneyTracker will spark a convergence of online banking, money management and mobile banking. "It neatly ties them together to offer members a comprehensive way to stay on top of their finances seamlessly on their own schedules."
The MoneyTracker search feature helps members narrow down transactions by amount, payee, or time period using natural-language search strings such as "around $50," "Starbucks over $25" or "last two weeks Starbucks under $5."
The search strings can also be transformed into e-mail, Short-Message Service (SMS) or secure Really-Simple Syndication (RSS) alerts to notify members about unusual activity.
The Amplify members who are using MoneyTracker are doing more than just staring at their various accounts online, White said.
"The account list, categories, and transaction list functions are the most popular so far, indicating that most users are taking advantage of the software for money management purposes or budgeting or both," he said.
Taylor doesn't like the way that third parties, such as Intuit's Quicken, Wesabe.com or credit card banking sites, steal the focus away from credit union homebanking sites. Users may view accounts online at the CU, but then sign off and work within other money management software or banking sites and take advantage of other marketing offers.
"So many credit unions are paying Intuit and AMEX to take away their business," Taylor explained. "We want to put their eyeballs back on the credit union."
Thus, in addition to culling transactions from multiple payers, MoneyTracker keeps members at the CU by offering an online safety deposit box that members can use to store financial statements from other institutions.
On top of that, MoneyTracker features a site banner in which CUs can rotate "subtle, textual" targeted marketing, Taylor said. "We're completely flipping around the idea of a clean room for Internet banking. It's liberating and powerful, and it's a mindset change for credit unions."
MoneyTracker-and FinanceWorks and Wesabe, for that matter-are part of the Web 2.0 buzz about how people use the Internet to interact.
"Since 2000, the way we look at our accounts online hasn't changed at all," Taylor said. "MoneyTracker appeals to the larger bucket of people out there who want to do better with their money management but don't know how and don't want to spend a lot of money or go through a lot of pain."
MoneyTracker is being implemented at three other credit unions, Taylor said. The software is available as a subscription or a license, with licensing fees of $8,000 to $80,000 or more, depending on asset size.
Jwaala is mainly pursuing credit unions, "but we're willing to react to banks, too," he said.
Whereas Intuit will provide a small business version of FinanceWorks, MoneyTracker is focused on the personal side, Taylor said.
For More Resources
Read more about money management software at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
Quicken-lite for a story on how some CUs are using Intuit's Personal FinanceWorks.
'Aggregation' No Longer Buzzword, for a story about credit unions that swear by account aggregation.
For more info on this story:
* Amplify FCU, www.goamplify.com
* Jwaala, www.jwaala.com
