Social personal finance website Wesabe has announced the launch of a new "Tips" feature that provides members with customized, side-by-side comparisons of competing businesses across a number of data points. Wesabe says that 'Tips gives members financial power by arming them with the most comprehensive mix of purchase behavior data, consumer satisfaction ratings and advice.'   » Continue Reading

Social personal finance website Wesabe has announced the launch of an automated "add your bank" feature, allowing Wesabe's members to immediately add their financial institutions and upload data. During the sign-up process, if a new member's bank or credit union isn't one of the nearly 5,000 currently supported by Wesabe, they can add it to the database in less than a minute and begin uploading data. Wesabe's Marc Hedlund blogs about the new feature.   » Continue Reading

Wesabe has announced the release of Wesabe Mobile, a free, secure banking platform for mobile devices, that "lets members use any web-enabled cell phone or PDA to monitor their account balances and recent transactions for thousands of banks and credit cards worldwide. Wesabe Mobile also provides members with an easy way to record and track where they are spending cash."   » Continue Reading

Carolyn Y. Johnson writes for the Boston Globe about social networking sites and how they're beginning to offer financial advice. Johnson notes that "the tools that people use to connect with their peers and share information on websites like Facebook, Del.icio.us, or Wikipedia can help people save money or make smarter purchases." She quotes Wesabe's Jason Knight: "Social finance is a way for consumers to find out if there's real value where they're spending money. . . . It's absolutely critical in rebalancing the power between consumers and marketers."

Wesabe has announced the release of an open-source Firefox extension that lets members automate the secure upload of bank data to their Wesabe account. After members "record" download sessions with their banks, the scripts auto-start and play to deliver updated transaction information to Wesabe.   » Continue Reading

Marc Hedlund, co-founder and chief product officer of personal financial information provider Wesabe, blogs about the new API they're introducing. He writes "We want to take the idea of a credit bureau (where businesses report their experiences with consumers so that other businesses can benefit) and turn it on its head — building instead a value bureau, where consumers can share their experiences with businesses, so all consumers can benefit." Documentation on the new Wesabe API is available online.

Wesabe has announced that "its member-owned financial transaction database is the largest of its kind in the world, with more than $500 million in transactions. The company gave several examples of how it is putting that data to work, revealing which major banks charge its members the most in overdraft fees (Wachovia and U.S. Bank). Wesabe also reported the types of member purchases that give the most satisfaction (outdoor and camping), and showed that purchases in industries where there is the least competition, such as phone, utilities and cable, give the least satisfaction."   » Continue Reading

Jane Kim writes for the Wall St. Journal about social networking sites focused on personal finance - including Wesabe and BillMonk.

Speaking of BillMonk, they just launched the BillMonk application on the FaceBook Platform. They say "Let BillMonk help you keep track of money that you've borrowed or loaned, and eliminate the awkwardness of mixing money and friends. Use it to keep track of IOUs, and shared bills like beer, food, or utilities. Let us deal with the pain of money math and reminders, so you can concentrate on the beer and not who paid for it."

Want to learn more about the FaceBook Platform, read this excellent post by Marc Andreessen.

Jim Bruene's out with a new edition of the Online Banking Report - this time covering the area of "Social Personal Finance". More info about this new report is available on Jim's Netbanker blog.

Jim Bruene blogs about his upcoming Online Banking Report issue on the topic of Social Personal Finance. Jim says it will include "a detailed look at Wesabe and Lending Club, which is catering entirely to Facebook users, and what banks should do to compete and/or partner with this new type of financial provider."

We've long been intrigued with Wesabe, a Berkeley, California-based personal financial management startup, since they launched. They've got a loyal group of users and the management team uses their feedback endlessly to improve their service. For some insights into what's happening at Wesabe, view the LunchMeet's interview with Wesabe's Jason Knight, CEO, and Marc Hedlund, chief product officer.

Saying that "bank marketers that ignore Wesabe are missing the bigger picture," Ron Shevlin writes on his Marketing ROI blog about how Wesabe's focus is right - on benefiting the customer by validating their financial decisions.

Wesabe's Marc Hedlund blogs on Wheaties for Your Wallet about the contrast between our desires to both give and receive gift cards - but then to leave billions of dollars unspent on them each year.

PodTech has posted a great LunchMeet video interviewing Jason Knight and Marc Hedlund, the two founders of Berkeley, CA-based Wesabe, a new web site focused on personal financial management. A core idea behind Wesabe is the great notion that where you spend money represents an implicit recommendation by you of a merchant - sort of like how Google interprets links to a web site as representing a recommendation of that web site. The video includes a demo that shows how Wesabe works to bring together recommendations and experiences to help you better manage your money. Think of Quicken enhanced with the spending experiences of lots of your neighbors. What might be even more interesting would be to get below the level of the "purchase at a merchant" data itself - into the shopping cart and then mining that data for product specific recommendations.

Listen to the web. "Jason Knight and Marc Hedlund are the co-founders of a company called Wesabe, which is all about bringing people together in a community designed to make getting the most from your money dead simple." Read more about what they're thinking at their blog "Wheaties For Your Wallet". For example, read Marc's recent frustrations trying to pay his American Express credit card bill online. Or another post about how Marc felt he was treated as a (now an ex-) Washington Mutual customer.