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ThoughtWorks in the Dopplr 100 November 8, 2007

Posted by James Webster in : web , add a comment

It is slightly old news but it appears that ThoughtWorks has been added to the Dopplr 100; hopefully those colleagues of mine who find themselves traveling frequently can make use of this service to bring more serendipity into their lives. More on the Dopplr 100 here and also the MBA 100.

What is Dopplr? In their own words…

How does Dopplr work? Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. For example, Dopplr might tell you that three of your trusted friends and colleagues will be in Barcelona when you are planning to be there.

Thanks for the invitation Dopplrs!

P2P lending levels up… November 3, 2007

Posted by James Webster in : web, finance , 1 comment so far

At the end of a previous post on microfinance and P2P lending I mentioned the US firm named Prosper. Now TechCrunch reports that they have submitted a proposal to the SEC for a secondary market for the loans that Prosper helps originate. I wonder if an OTC derivatives market won’t be too far behind…

I also wondered when Australia and New Zealand might see such an operation; a few days ago Finextra reported on iGrin which has been established by a former Commonwealth Bank executive.

These startups are small at the moment but are representing a growing threat to the traditional intermediaries. From the Finextra article:

Research released earlier this year by the Social Futures Observatory found that peer-to-peer social lending networks represented a serious threat to the traditional banking industry. The UK study found that 74% of Brits would consider borrowing or lending through an online “social lending” community, and that as many as 61% don’t trust their banks.

Meanwhile more microfinance ventures have started up:

As a keen “lender” via Kiva (here’s my Kiva portfolio) I was curious about the differences between Kiva and MicroPlace. Josh also linked to an article on WorldChanging which provides some insight into the differences:

Are Kiva and MicroPlace competitors? Yes and no. On the one hand, they compete for lenders and have similar models.

On the other hand, Kiva is filling an unmet need in terms of providing a direct, peer-to-peer portal on which lenders and borrowers can connect. MicroPlace, meanwhile, is more businesslike - it offers a portal where profit-conscious investors can get involved in microfinance without totally compromising on rate of return.

With the rapid growth in these microfinance portals I think it might be time for The MIX Market to add them to the list of organisations that they monitor.

Ah, HERE is the web service API for my bank account! July 13, 2007

Posted by James Webster in : web, finance , 6 comments

A long time ago I asked why my bank account did not have a web service API. I had come across Dimewise and thought it would be a great way to monitor my personal finances. The kicker was that it meant manually downloading my transaction history from my bank account and uploading it to Dimewise. Why can’t we just get a read-only API that allows us to download transaction history? Or why can we not have a machine-readable XML file emailed to us every week?

A few weeks later I came across Wesabe, best described as a Web 2.0 version of Quicken. They have some tools that automate downloading your transactions and uploading it to Wesabe, although these tools are at the mercy of the growing trend towards two-factor authentication on most internet banking websites. Alternatively Wesabe accepts CSV, OFX and other file upload formats commonly exported by banking websites. They take privacy very seriously having baked it into their architecture. Their tools use the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ to give you the option to clean up your transaction data and turn it into something useful (although I do find that the tools don’t really give me the fine control that I really need… Guys how about that regex or glob-based pattern matching approach that I requested?)

And just now, Wesabe have released an API. I am happy to see efforts to enable the banking public to get their financial data out of the roach motels that most banking websites are. Unfortunately now that I have moved back to the UK my current bank has NO transaction export capability whatsoever. Can anyone recommend a UK bank with a decent internet banking website that exports reasonable OFX data?!?!

Meanwhile I wonder if Scott Hanselman might convince Corillian to built a web service API into their banking platform?