Social/mobile payments site Billmonk had a mini merger with competitor Obopay last month (we called it a “battle for relevance” since PayPal has a strong product offering in the mobile space as well). Buxfer is another social money Y Combinator funded company that softly launched last September. It provides the same basic functionality of Billmonk, such as keeping a running total of debts and credits with your friends (only money), but has grown up a little and added some nice data visualization.
Buxfer is deeper than Billmonk, letting you track and tag out your expenses with friends and groups over time. The groups option makes it great for managing debts between roommates or within a club. Billmonk is more geared to managing splitting debts between friends and lending out your stuff. Buxfer goes further, letting you analyze you expenses over time through a Google finance-style pie chart with adjustable time frame. Buxfer has gone to great lengths to make importing transactions as easy as possible. They currently support adding transactions to your account via SMS and the ability to import your credit card statements (.csv,.qfx,.ofx). From there you can tag and divide up your expenses as you see fit.
What’s great is that these sites start with a simple day-to-day problem that can frustrates us all and present a solution. However, without intimate integration with payment services, it’s still a chore. I’m not so OCD that I will tag and text myself about every payment I make. Wesabe has payment integration, but is also going after the quicken market. Billmonk really benefited from integration with Obopay deal and perhaps Buxfer will find a similar partner.
We really must be facing a domain name shortage if startups are resorting to names like Buxfer …
Provides a nice graphical breakdown of expenses. Now I can make sure all my lousy friends pay me back.
Buxfer stands for Bucks + transfer.
The graphs and charts are extremely helpful. I recently moved from Billmonk to Buxfer.
I’ve been using Buxfer for awhile now… their features for groups allow you and your friends to easily cover each other without actual money having to change hands. This is especially good way for roommates who already cover each other to save time in the process.
C’mon guys. Registration and Login don’t work in Safari. Feedback doesn’t work on MacFirefox. Kill the Ajax!
Hey, I just checked it out on my Safari, and I was able to login.
Perhaps many of you people don’t see the main problem with BuxFer.
They have been around for 6 months now and have many first-time users but people are not coming back after a first rendezvous.
They have about 10K users and the homepage reports about 26K transactions. This means an average of 2.6 transactions per user which is very low. This average has remained the same for the last 4-5 months, implying that the site is the one of many which gets excited first-time users who never come back.
I think you have a point. I just don’t see people entering (SMS or otherwise) transactions for everything theyp purchase. The time cost is too high.
Take a look at our personal finance webapp: http://www.moneytrackin.com
We launched it on May ‘06 and have received funds from Martin Varsavsky (FON CEO).
sounds like an interesting idea. I dont think it will take off though…too time consuming.
I have OCD. Anyways, thats a side note. I’d really like to find a good service that has payment integration. I liked LowerMyBill’s BillPay service but they are closing it within the next few months – or so they said in an email (I didn’t see anything on the actual site).
Interestingly, the BuxFer blog is a one-sided discussion forum. In the past, comments which don’t agree with the website’s well-being have been killed by the moderator. I tried to post something rational which was long these lines yesterday but the moderator disapproved it again. Sad.
Buxfer won’t support Safari, so I’m sticking to Billster. I think the problem with bill splitting sites is that the people who most need reminding, never seem to join! *yes, that was bitterness speaking*
Who’s going to take the time to put their social spending into some spreadsheet?
Not me…
KushCash has that feature installed in their M-wallet technology. I know all about Obopay and Obopay simply bought Billmonk to catch up with KushCash, no matter what they say….. I can say that pretty openly as KushCash implemented their own Social money module back in august. Kind of funny how Obo says that they are the first to implement that, when sites like buxfer/kushcash/billster etc have been in the space longer than Obo. hmmm seems like they are biting others.
The site is really slow right now, especially with the player constantly trying to load itself.http://www.bestvideoconverter.net