THE BRIDGE

tag finance apps

Japan’s Photo Money app brings a visual approach to personal finance

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We have witnessed a number of personal finance apps from Japanese developers over the past few years. Most notably, both Zaim and ReceReco have both taken an ease-of-input approach by implementing OCR technology into their apps for quick scanning of receipts. But today I’d like to look at a new personal finance app that takes a more visual approach to monitoring your personal spending. It’s called Photo Money. Currently available on iOS in both Japanese and English, the application lets you take a picture of whatever you’ve bought, and add the price using a large calculator-style input. Note that you can input in just about any currency, so users all around the world can try out Photo Money if they wish. The result of logging your purchases in this way is a reverse-chronological gallery of your expenditures, which is a great visual overview of your spending. The app also differs from other finance apps in that it presents only a weekly view. While this could be merely because of the space constraints of the photo gallery view, the developer states that it’s because one week gives you shorter iterations of time to improve your spending habits. So if you aren’t…

photomoney

We have witnessed a number of personal finance apps from Japanese developers over the past few years. Most notably, both Zaim and ReceReco have both taken an ease-of-input approach by implementing OCR technology into their apps for quick scanning of receipts. But today I’d like to look at a new personal finance app that takes a more visual approach to monitoring your personal spending. It’s called Photo Money.

Currently available on iOS in both Japanese and English, the application lets you take a picture of whatever you’ve bought, and add the price using a large calculator-style input. Note that you can input in just about any currency, so users all around the world can try out Photo Money if they wish. The result of logging your purchases in this way is a reverse-chronological gallery of your expenditures, which is a great visual overview of your spending.

The app also differs from other finance apps in that it presents only a weekly view. While this could be merely because of the space constraints of the photo gallery view, the developer states that it’s because one week gives you shorter iterations of time to improve your spending habits. So if you aren’t happy with your spending this week, you can try to do better starting next Monday!

Developed by RandyApps [1], Photo Money is ad supported, although I think many users would welcome a paid, ad-free version too. Photo Money is currently not ranked very high on the App Store, but I think if it was reclassified to be included in the less croweded ‘finance’ category (it looks to be classified as a photo app for the time being), it could gain significant visibility as applications like Zaim and ReceReco have.

photo-money-2


  1. I’ve reached out to the Japanese developer, who may be based in Japan, or possibly Australia. I’m not certain.  ↩

With 1M people using her Zaim finance app, founder Takako Kansai has more plans ahead

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It has been a while since we checked in on Japanese personal finance app Zaim. So I was surprised and delighted to bump into the service’s creator Takako Kansai at an event in Osaka last week. In addition to being a mainstay app on my mobile, letting me scan my receipts and track my spending, Zaim also has one of the best founder stories ever, as Takako developed her app during her subway commute to and from work. She informed me that Zaim has recently surpassed one million downloads, and is expected to reach two million sometime next year. Takako says that their relationship with Cookpad, after raising 42 million yen from the company, is “very good”. She adds that when you use Zaim to scan a receipt with your mobile, the supermarket information is saved to their database. But they can also connect to the Cookpad database, and get more information from there to serve their users as well. In this way, users are provided special bargains or promotions about local supermarkets via Cookpad’s bargain search service. When I asked what the next step is for Zaim, Takako could only say that it was a secret. So we know…

It has been a while since we checked in on Japanese personal finance app Zaim. So I was surprised and delighted to bump into the service’s creator Takako Kansai at an event in Osaka last week. In addition to being a mainstay app on my mobile, letting me scan my receipts and track my spending, Zaim also has one of the best founder stories ever, as Takako developed her app during her subway commute to and from work.

She informed me that Zaim has recently surpassed one million downloads, and is expected to reach two million sometime next year. Takako says that their relationship with Cookpad, after raising 42 million yen from the company, is “very good”. She adds that when you use Zaim to scan a receipt with your mobile, the supermarket information is saved to their database. But they can also connect to the Cookpad database, and get more information from there to serve their users as well. In this way, users are provided special bargains or promotions about local supermarkets via Cookpad’s bargain search service.

When I asked what the next step is for Zaim, Takako could only say that it was a secret. So we know there’s something, although it’s hard to guess what that might be. So far the app has been focused on slow incremental improvements, but thankfully it has managed to retain the simplicity and ease-of-use that made it strong to start with. Given Zaim’s continued focus on the user, I expect that any upcoming new features will make it easier to use, and help solidify it’s foothold as one of Japan’s dominant finance apps.

You can check out our short interview with Takako in the video above. And if you have yet to check out Zaim, you can get it for iOS, Android, and on the web.

zaim-lead
Zaim’s web interface

Japan’s cloud-based invoicing platform Misoca raises $300,000

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See the original story in Japanese. Nagoya-based Standfirm, the startup behind cloud-based invoicing platform Misoca, recently announced that it has raised 30 million yen (about $300,000) from Incubate Fund. The platform lets you to edit and manage estimates, invoices, statements of delivery using a handy dashboard. You can even ask the startup to print and mail these items to your clients on your behalf. With these funds, the company plans to intensify hiring and marketing efforts. Their upcoming focus areas will be: Starting inbound marketing efforts Improving user experience Integrating with CRM or ERP solution services Develop an entirely online platform to deliver of invoices/estimates. Since their launch back in June of 2011, Misoca has acquired more than 8,000 users, and more than 700 of them are using the service on a monthly basis.

standfirm-team

See the original story in Japanese.

Nagoya-based Standfirm, the startup behind cloud-based invoicing platform Misoca, recently announced that it has raised 30 million yen (about $300,000) from Incubate Fund.

The platform lets you to edit and manage estimates, invoices, statements of delivery using a handy dashboard. You can even ask the startup to print and mail these items to your clients on your behalf. With these funds, the company plans to intensify hiring and marketing efforts. Their upcoming focus areas will be:

  • Starting inbound marketing efforts
  • Improving user experience
  • Integrating with CRM or ERP solution services
  • Develop an entirely online platform to deliver of invoices/estimates.

Since their launch back in June of 2011, Misoca has acquired more than 8,000 users, and more than 700 of them are using the service on a monthly basis.

Moneytree gives Japanese consumers smarter access to their finances

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See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall when we recently featured Japanese personal finance app Zaim. It finally has OCR functionality which can collect purchase data just by taking a photo of your receipt. But as many people have multiple bank accounts and multiple credit cards, they might be interested in a more robust financial organization system for their money management. Australian entrepreneur Paul Chapman (based in Japan) has created Moneytree, a smartphone app that allows users to manage their spending by importing bank balances and card billing updates. The app has a sort of artificial intelligence, and can sort your spendings into the appropriate categories. Its data analysis feature will surface trends about your spending too. In comparison to similar apps, Moneytree eliminates much of the manual work, as it just syncs with user accounts from more than 30 banks and credit card companies. The Moneytree team is working out of Co-ba, a co-working space in Shibuya. As to why they developed this sort of app, Paul explains: People feel tracking their finances is a heavy burden. It takes too much time, so people give up soon after starting, and that makes you feel a sense…

moneytreee

See the original story in Japanese.

Our readers may recall when we recently featured Japanese personal finance app Zaim. It finally has OCR functionality which can collect purchase data just by taking a photo of your receipt. But as many people have multiple bank accounts and multiple credit cards, they might be interested in a more robust financial organization system for their money management.

Australian entrepreneur Paul Chapman (based in Japan) has created Moneytree, a smartphone app that allows users to manage their spending by importing bank balances and card billing updates.

The app has a sort of artificial intelligence, and can sort your spendings into the appropriate categories. Its data analysis feature will surface trends about your spending too. In comparison to similar apps, Moneytree eliminates much of the manual work, as it just syncs with user accounts from more than 30 banks and credit card companies.

mtkk-presskit-detail

The Moneytree team is working out of Co-ba, a co-working space in Shibuya. As to why they developed this sort of app, Paul explains:

People feel tracking their finances is a heavy burden. It takes too much time, so people give up soon after starting, and that makes you feel a sense of guilt. Moneytree is an app that seeks to do the hard work for you — after signing up, you just open the app on your device to see bank balances or credit card usage.

These days, with a growing number of e-commerce services out there, consumers will tend to use cash less often when purchase, preferring to use credit card or e-money. New payment methods, such as the Coiney app for example, could drastically change the Japanese payment market and increase the volume of credit card transactions.

It will be interesting to see where Moneytree will fit in among the forest of finance management options available in Japan.