{"id":340448,"date":"2017-05-09T20:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1486904"},"modified":"2017-05-09T20:00:25","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T12:00:25","slug":"sequoia-backed-startup-empower-aims-to-replace-your-banks-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/sequoia-backed-startup-empower-aims-to-replace-your-banks-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Sequoia-backed startup Empower aims to replace your bank\u2019s app"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Empower<\/a>, a startup looking to help millennials better manage their finances, is today launching its mobile app for iOS devices. The new application combines the ability to see an overview of your\u00a0day-to-day transactions and spending behavior, with other tools to transfer money between accounts, automate your savings, and soon, pay\u00a0bills and pay down your\u00a0debt.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal, explains Empower\u2019s founder Warren Hogarth, is to have Empower be able to fully replace your bank\u2019s app.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to help you\u00a0take action to get ahead \u2013 without you having to exit the app, go to your bank app, remember you password, move money around\u2026[with Empower] from one place, you have control of everything,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Prior to starting Empower around a year ago, Hogarth had spent the past seven and a half years as a partner at Sequoia, where he saw first-hand how modern fintech startups were helping changed the way people approached managing money, payments, and investing. Sequoia has backed a number of top fintech players, including Square, Stripe, Prosper, Klarna, FutureAdvisor, and SunRun, for example, and Hogarth led the investments in the last two himself.<\/p>\n

Having this bird\u2019s-eye view into the market helped Hogarth see a\u00a0niche that could still be filled, he explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one really has been able to crack the nut in\u00a0building the one app on your homescreen that consumers use to manage their money,\u201d says Hogarth.<\/p>\n

One of the bigger companies in this space was Mint, which has been around for more than a decade and wasn\u2019t built with a mobile-first mindset.<\/p>\n

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In addition, Empower isn\u2019t just pulling in data from banks and other financial firms \u2013 it has\u00a0partnered with the providers, and then performs in-house data cleaning and structuring to help the data make sense to end users.<\/p>\n

To get started, you search in the app for banks and financial firms where you have accounts, then login to add them to Empower. The company uses strong encryption and claims it sets\u00a0a higher bar on security because it\u2019s audited by its financial partners. (Says Hogarth, data is 256-bit AES encrypted at rest, 256-bit SSL encrypted at transfer, and stored in PCI-compliant environment; user credentials aren\u2019t stored).<\/p>\n

Once your accounts are added, Empower can show you where you\u2019re spending your money broken down by category, or alert you if you\u2019re spending more than your pre-configured limit. You can categorize transactions it hasn\u2019t been able to identify itself, and this will contribute to a crowdsourced database of transaction categories \u2013 meaning, the app\u2019s ability to identify your transactions will get better in time, as more people use it.<\/p>\n

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Of course, some\u00a0banks already offer reporting and analysis tools built into their own apps, but Empower aims to do more\u00a0in time.<\/p>\n

At launch, it can facilitate transfers between any of its over 1,000 supported banks, and will allow you to set aside a percentage of your paycheck through an auto-saving feature.\u00a0There are a number of apps out today that can also aid in automating your savings, like Digit,<\/a>\u00a0Oval<\/a>, Clinc<\/a>, Acorns<\/a>, Albert<\/a>, Qapital<\/a>, and others. However, Empower doesn\u2019t attempt to set up its own white-label savings account \u2013 it lets you transfer money into an account you already operate.<\/p>\n

The app also competes with a variety of others that offer to give you a fuller view of your financial health \u2013 including\u00a0Albert<\/a>,\u00a0Prosper Daily<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Level Money<\/a>, for example \u2013 but doesn\u2019t yet\u00a0have some of the more in-depth analysis and charting or\u00a0intelligent push notifications of its rivals. But it expects to grow its toolset in time, and plans to offer features that will help users\u00a0pay down\u00a0student loans, transfer funds into high-interest savings accounts, and will make suggestions about loan products that could save you\u00a0money through refinancing debt.<\/p>\n

Empower may also suggest later that users use\u00a0their excess cash to make investments, but will not make investment advice\u00a0itself \u2013 though it may work with robo-advisers in the future on those efforts.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco-based team of five also includes co-founder Justin Ammerlaan<\/a>, whose background\u00a0involves building software for financial institutions.<\/p>\n

The company has raised an undisclosed round of seed funding (not surprisingly) led by Sequoia.<\/p>\n

The Empower app is a free download on iTunes<\/a>. An Android version is a few months out.<\/p>\n