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Japanese receipt recording app ‘ReceReco’ hits 1M downloads in first 145 days

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Back in mid-May we noted that Japanese receipt recording app ReceReco had broken through its first year target of 500,000 downloads, just three and a half months after its January 31st launch. The app lets you take pictures of your receipts with your smartphone camera, reading, analyzing, and storing data about your purchasing history, and it has been very popular here in Japan since its release. At the time, Brain Pad (the company behind the app) said that they were targeting a million downloads before the end of the year. But ReceReco, which remains a fixture at or near the top of the finance app category in Japan, topped 1 million this past Monday, the company now tells us. It took just 145 days to reach that goal, a pace that far exceeds their initial expectations. What’s remarkable here is that this growth comes only on the iOS platform, so once an Android version hits Google Play (that release is scheduled for September), similar popularity is virtually assured now that the app has gained some popularity and name recognition. ReceReco is still only available in Japan, and can be downloaded over on the app store for free, with a paid…

rece-reco

Back in mid-May we noted that Japanese receipt recording app ReceReco had broken through its first year target of 500,000 downloads, just three and a half months after its January 31st launch. The app lets you take pictures of your receipts with your smartphone camera, reading, analyzing, and storing data about your purchasing history, and it has been very popular here in Japan since its release.

At the time, Brain Pad (the company behind the app) said that they were targeting a million downloads before the end of the year. But ReceReco, which remains a fixture at or near the top of the finance app category in Japan, topped 1 million this past Monday, the company now tells us. It took just 145 days to reach that goal, a pace that far exceeds their initial expectations.

What’s remarkable here is that this growth comes only on the iOS platform, so once an Android version hits Google Play (that release is scheduled for September), similar popularity is virtually assured now that the app has gained some popularity and name recognition.

ReceReco is still only available in Japan, and can be downloaded over on the app store for free, with a paid add-ons that removes advertisements. To mark this 1 million download milestone, ReceReco has the ad removal function available at a discount (85 yen) for the rest of the month.

Zaim: If you live in Japan and you buy things, you need this app

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[See our Japanese article on Zaim’s update] Japanese personal finance application Zaim has today pushed out a new update to its iOS app that gives it one very exciting and powerful feature. For users here in Japan, the app now has convenient OCR functionality which enables you to record and categorize your purchases simply by taking photos of your receipts. For a quick demo of how it works, check out the video above. On the Zaim blog, they boast an average recognition rate of 96% for this new OCR feature. The app will also collect data about the name of the store too, so you’ll have a record of where you’ve made your purchases. This is especially handy considering that the web version of Zaim lets you download your data in CSV format (see right), which you can then bring into your preferred spreadsheet software. For now, it’s just the iOS version of Zaim that has the OCR function, but Android users can look forward getting this soon as well. I’ve been a big fan of the Zaim app for a long time. It was developed by Tokyo-based entrepreneur and programmer Takako Kansai, who – as legend has it –…

[See our Japanese article on Zaim’s update]

Japanese personal finance application Zaim has today pushed out a new update to its iOS app that gives it one very exciting and powerful feature. For users here in Japan, the app now has convenient OCR functionality which enables you to record and categorize your purchases simply by taking photos of your receipts. For a quick demo of how it works, check out the video above.

Zaim, export data as CSV
Zaim, export data as CSV

On the Zaim blog, they boast an average recognition rate of 96% for this new OCR feature. The app will also collect data about the name of the store too, so you’ll have a record of where you’ve made your purchases. This is especially handy considering that the web version of Zaim lets you download your data in CSV format (see right), which you can then bring into your preferred spreadsheet software.

For now, it’s just the iOS version of Zaim that has the OCR function, but Android users can look forward getting this soon as well.

I’ve been a big fan of the Zaim app for a long time. It was developed by Tokyo-based entrepreneur and programmer Takako Kansai, who – as legend has it – developed the app while on the train commuting to and from work.

zaim-ocr