Jason Lim for Forbes writes: Most people usually neglect keeping track of their personal finances. With multiple bank and credit card accounts, bank fees get all too much for us to handle. To put us back in control of our money, Aussie FinTech startup, Pocketbook has come to the rescue with an intuitive mobile app.
By syncing with all your financial accounts, Pocketbook users are able to monitor how their money is being used or even misused. By automatically categorizing your daily spending habits into areas like food, groceries and fuel – budgeting and goal tracking becomes much easier. Its clever notification system tells you when a bill is due or when a bank fee is charged, which can often be a surprise or a mistake. Pocketbook is able to sync data with 80% of major financial institutions in Australia, including the big 4 banks.
By solving a real need for many people, the app has been heavily adopted in the Australian market. It now has over 100,000 users of which about 35% are monthly active. The app hit this milestone twice as fast as it reached 50,000 users and it achieved this mark within ten months of an initial AUD$500,000 in funding. To further propel their growth and expansion, Pocketbook is actively raising an AUD$2.5 million Series A round of funding from strategic investors in Australia. Pocketbook plays in the same space asMint.com, which was acquired for US$140 million back in 2009 by Intuit INTU +1.33%.
According to AppAnnie, Pocketbook currently sits at number 21 for Finance apps in the iOS store in Australia and number 729 overall. It has an average of 4.5 stars over 1086 ratings across all versions.
Pocketbook is free to use and the team has no immediate plans to monetize it, as growth is the current primary objective. However, as it grows over time, Pocketbook is generating compelling insights from its data collection and analysis. By completely making its data anonymous and rolling it up to an aggregate level, Pocketbook has been able to glean some fascinating consumer spending trends.
Based on their analysis, Pocketbook discovered that Australian’s pay 31.44% more than Americans for Ikea products. This has convinced Pocketbook that it is cheaper for a small business buying Ikea office furniture to buy and ship it from America. Another piece of analysis shows that Netflix NFLX +1.12%, which isn’t even officially available yet in Australia, is the second most popular paid content-media (after Foxtel) with 27% market share.
Alvin Singh and Bosco Tan founded Pocketbook just eighteen months ago. After transitioning from working at a large company to a small company, Singh wanted a way to make sure he was in healthy financial shape. “I tried everything but all the tools were really complicated. Most were accounting based products, which I didn’t need. Being an engineer I built something myself. I showed some friends and everyone wanted it and that’s when I realized it could be a thing,” said Singh. One of those friends he showed was Bosco, a long time high school friend. Impressed by the app, Bosco wanted in on the action so they joined forces to launch the company.
The duo believes that there is a mass-market appetite for a product that can help users be more financially aware and in control. With a relatively unstable economy, falling real wages and asset prices rapidly rising; the younger generation needs all the money management help they can get. Pocketbook is still early on its journey to greatness, but the outlook is bright if their current level of traction continues. “One of the litmus tests we have is when we’re on the bus or train and see people with their Pocketbook open,” said Tan.
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