Wesabe makes the web into a banking platform

If you are not familiar with the trendy Personal Finance space, Wesabe is its most innovative and high profile startup.

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article on Personal Finance: Personal finance: the internet banking 2.0 killer app? I haven't changed my mind, and I still believe Wesabe is one of the best examples of web 2.0, "social networking"/online community and user generated content.

I agree with my colleague, and fellow blogger, James Gardner who said in his excellent post A challenge to Wesabe that he was impressed with the way Wesabe innovate and communicate: "Wesabe are marvellous at letting everyone know when they are doing something new, so hat-tip to them".

I am passionate about online visibility, buzz marketing and word-and-mouth. I would like to congratulate Debbie Pfeifer for her enthusiasm, her videos and her emails.
Debbie, thanks for contacting me prior every new press release!

The title of my post comes from an interesting article by Marc Hedlund, published yesterday on O'Reilly Radar: Making the web into a banking platform (whether they like it or not).

New features
Wesabe recently launched a couple of innovative features:
* a REST API that allows anyone to get their bank or credit card data in XML, Excel, CSV, or a bunch of standard financial formats.
* an OPEN SOURCE FIREFOX EXTENSION that allows anyone to automatically extract data from their bank every night, and upload it to Wesabe, regardless of whether their bank provides automatic download or not.
* IMAGE CAPTURE that allows anyone to easily capture screen images of ecommerce transactions and file them for later reference

Well done Marc and Jason. Keep up the good work!

Other articles of interest
* Wesabe, Billeo Add Image Capture: Is it the Next Must-Have Online Banking Feature? - 25 July 07
* The Wesabe Firefox Uploader - 25 July 07
* One more thing…. Browser Snapshot and file attachments - 25 July 07
* Your bank has a REST API now (shhh! — don’t tell them) - 12 July 07
 
Firefox Uploader: Introduction Screencast
Excellent screencast Debbie. You posted it on YouTube two days ago (24 July 07), and 2,589 people watched it already.

Please check all the Wesabe videos available on YouTube.