Moneytree, a Japanese personal financial management app, has received $1.6 million in financing led by DG Incubation to bring its app to the US sometime in 2014.
No, you’re not in a time warp. Moneytree is indeed a PFM solution. It relies on machine learning and peer data to customize the experience for users. The company’s CEO, Paul Chapman, argues that there is still room for PFM in the world because the best PFM product for mobile has yet to be delivered.
Moneytree seeks differentiation in an overcrowded and very tired space by integrating concepts from the quantified self movement and “radically simplify[ing]” the user’s relationship to money, according to Chapman.
Budgets, which are a particularly unloved aspect of PFM, are wisely de-emphasized in Moneytree. The app will focus on three things in its US launch, Chapman says: “cash flow, debt management and retirement savings.”
A PFM that is looking to be mobile-first is presumably targeting a younger demographic, to whom “retirement savings” can sound a lot like “purple unicorns.” There is also some possibility of brand confusion with the US payday lender also called Moneytree. But the Japanese Moneytree has some time and money to figure these issues out.
The app has been downloaded over 200,000 times and has aggregated data from over 15 million transactions, according to TechCrunch. It launched in 2013. The service is presently only available in Japan.