UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph is launching a personal finance tool on its website through a partnership with money management start-up Wesabe.
The Telegraph Personal Finance Planner allows users to manage their finances in one place where they can see their bank and credit card balances, save money and track their spending, says Wesabe. In addition, the tool can be set up in any currency.
Wesabe CEO Marc Hedlund says the company is now poised for "significant growth" given The Daily Telegraph's22.9m online visitors. The company already has 100,000 users worldwide and claims to have experienced subscriber growth of 33% per month over the past three months.
This growth helps make Wesabe's aggregate data analysis and financial tips all the more useful, the company claims.
However, bloggers express concern that users of the new tool will be revealing financial data in a very public space. ReadWriteWeb says: "Technology plays in finance are often fascinating, but the newspaper? We're not sure that an institution founded on the premise that it tells everything is really the best choice to do personal finance through."
The blog also suspects The Daily Telegraph will integrate Wesabe further into its online operations, perhaps recommending stories to users based on their financial data.
Last year, Wesabe received USD4m in funding from Union Square Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. At the time, the company said it would use the money to "develop its products and increase marketing".
StrategyEye's related companies: Union Square Ventures, Telegraph Media Group, Wesabe, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures
