Wesabe Inc. has upgraded its account aggregation service by asking users to trust it with their passwords.
When the San Francisco company launched its aggregation site in 2006, it told users it did not need to store their online banking passwords to help them manage their finances. Though Wesabe needed the passwords to gather users' financial data, the passwords were stored by software on users' computers.
However, some rivals who came along later give the passwords to third-party aggregation vendors to store, and Wesabe eventually realized that people were willing to hand over control of this information.
"Over the last year it's become abundantly clear that consumers do trust us," said Jason Knight, Wesabe's chief executive. "People are essentially demanding that we hold on to credentials for them because they don't want to deal with the hassle."
Last week Wesabe began allowing users to submit their login credentials to the company to store, and it has used the data to enhance a nascent service that lets users view their financial data through a mobile phone.
When the mobile service was introduced in mid-December, it could provide only data that reflected balances and transactions as of the last time the user accessed Wesabe's site from a computer. People using a phone to access the site could not provide the passwords the company needed to gather up-to-date account details.
Allowing Wesabe to store the passwords eliminated this problem, Mr. Knight said, and people now can view timely balances and transaction details through mobile devices.
When Wesabe set up its aggregation site, it posted a toll-free number people could use to speak directly to Mr. Knight. Talking to the CEO, even briefly, was often all it took to convince people that the company was legitimate, he said.
When the site went live, callers often asked him about security issues, he said, but those questions began to wane after about three months. For about two months after that, he said, most calls came from people reporting bugs on the site, and for three months after that phase, most calls were requests for new features.
Now many people simply want to confirm that the phone number does what the company says it does, Mr. Knight said. "I get calls where people call, I say, 'This is Jason,' and they hang up all the time. They're just calling to see if I pick up the phone."
The emergence of rival sites, run by companies such as Mint Software Inc. and Geezeo Inc., have also helped legitimize the aggregation model, he said.
"Early adopters are polyamorous," he said. "They want to try everybody," but many who tried other providers kept using Wesabe, which now has about 100,000 users.
One reason users come to Wesabe is its service is fundamentally different from what users get at bank sites — in most cases, the ability to view only accounts at that institution — and bankers have been slow to meet the demand for a broader view of financial data.
"The most prevalent force within financial institutions is inertia," Mr. Knight said.
Wesabe is open to working with financial companies that want to offer such capabilities, he said. "We're in partnership discussions with multiple financial institutions. Credit unions have really embraced us in a big way."
Mr. Knight said his company has a deal with the Filene Research Institute, a Madison, Wis., credit union consulting firm. By midyear some of Filene's credit union customers will offer members rebranded versions of Wesabe's site.
Wesabe also is talking to a bank (which he would not identify) about a deal that may involve making some Wesabe services available on the bank's site.
George Tubin, a senior analyst at TowerGroup Inc., a Needham, Mass., independent research firm owned by MasterCard Inc., said Wesabe was right to be cautious at first, since the Internet was perceived in the past as a scary place.
"Five years ago I could imagine that nobody would have touched this," he said. "I think we've come along far enough now that people are used to this."
Wesabe has benefited from consumers' growing confidence in online banking, Mr. Tubin said. "When it comes to dealing with financial institutions, consumers generally have a level of trust with their financial providers."
But Wesabe is "providing a service and capability that a bank doesn't and possibly can't," he said. "It's a new type of service."
Wesabe may not have been able to ask users to trust it to keep their credentials at first, even though its eventual rivals did, Mr. Tubin said, but today it has a reputation that helps it. "They display and connote a site that's to be trusted."
The development of a mobile service eventually would have required Wesabe to start storing passwords, he said, because the lack of timely information would have restricted the service's appeal.
Users may as well "print a page out and keep it in your pocket," Mr. Tubin said. "To offer stale information that's not up to date is not very useful. … It makes sense that they would move in the direction that they did."
