There’s a new company in town – a company that’s trying to make managing our personal finances easier and more fun. Founded by Chrsto Davel – the same man who brought the pioneering online bank 20Twenty to South Africa, 22Seven is here to analyse how we spend.
22seven, which the team has billed as an “intelligent money saving tool” plugs directly – and securely – into your bank accounts and churns out an analysis on your spending habits.
This is what makes the service unique and, while they’ve come under fire from some banks for their way of grabbing the data, the team at 22Seven are confident that it’s secure.
How big is the risk?
"We take your security extremely seriously. From the start, we were committed to not adding an additional layer of risk, and to finding the best, most credible and trusted partners in the world. Which is why we chose to work with Yodlee," Sarah Rice, 22seven spokesperson said.
"Also, 22seven is a read-only service, which means it does nothing more than gather information from your accounts so we can show it to you in a way you’ve never seen before. You can’t transact or move money through 22seven," Rice added.
"As is the case with your bank (read their small print), ultimate liability rests with you. For more technical detail about how we protect your data, have a look at our security page. And for objective opinions on why it’s safe to use 22seven, you can read posts by Liron Segevand and Simon Dingle."
Play for fun
The website – designed to give you the feel of an application and the interactive functionality which sorts all your transactions into categories make it easy to use and fun to ‘play’ with.
How does it work?
To start off, users must link their bank account to the service. You supply your personal bank details to the third-party application and, while this might make most people flinch, 22seven assures that the banking information is closely guarded.
The platform is ‘read only’ – meaning that the service cannot make access to an account. Once all linked up, the system displays data in a bunch of circles which highlights the different levels of income. The circles are categorized as follows: Money In, Recurring, Day-to-day and Expectations.
“Money In” is your sources of income, “Recurring” are the fixed monthly costs we have to pay every month, rent, bills and so on, “Day-to-day” are the variable expenses which usually end up being a surprisingly expensive debt and “Exceptions” are the unplanned expenses.
The circles allow users to dig deep and pick apart their expenses – each month gives you a detailed break down of where your money is going – you can use the preset categories or you can create your own. Once you’ve categorised a specific transaction, the system decides where the expense should go in the future. Should this change in future, you can change it manually.
What does it cost?
For now, the site has launched in beta – it’s free, but it will eventually cost R70 per month.
For more go to https://www.22seven.com/