Bilance

Driving smarter spending with open banking

Bilance is the money management app that helps people understand their spending and improve their financial security.

“We cannot give people more money, but we can give them some peace of mind,” said Mihkel Vetemaa, CEO and Co-Founder, Bilance. “And we provide that via simple, automatic insights into how they’re really spending their money.”

The data that Bilance relies on to make this happen is Bank Account Data from GoCardless, a real-time source of open banking data.

“Our differentiating factor is the way our models categorise users’ spending data and transform it through visualisations,” said Mihkel. “Instead of just food spend, is it groceries or eating out? Rather than transport, is it public transport or a personal car? Those differences matter and GoCardless data is rich enough and accurate enough to make this possible. And it’s all accessible through a single API.”

Start-up friendly

GoCardless’ start-up friendly attitude made it a simple decision for Bilance to adopt Bank Account Data.

“When building our MVP, the free access version gave us a way to launch our product, and we were up and running in a week or two,” said Mihkel. “As a start-up trying to move fast with limited resources, it also helped that GoCardless has made its API so easy to work  — it couldn’t have been simpler to access all the data we needed.”

This support has continued as Bilance has scaled up, in the shape of regular collaboration with the GoCardless team to optimise bank connections as open banking matures.

“Like us, GoCardless is committed to improving access to financial data and we often have direct access to their engineers who are working to achieve that,” said Mihkel. “And they really care – a GoCardless developer even approached me at a conference to personally promise that he was taking care of an issue we’d flagged.”

Built for scale

Bank Account Data from GoCardless is built for scale – something Bilance has really put to the test. “So far, tens of thousands of users have connected their data via Bank Account Data, and we grew 7x last year,” said Mihkel. 

And there’s more to come, as the company expands from its base in the Baltics into Western Europe.

“Bank Account Data’s scalability goes beyond volume,” added Mihkel. “It allows us to access data across the entire European Economic Area via a single partner.”

Impossible to measure 

Bank Account Data from GoCardless has the potential to drive such a wide range of powerful applications, and it is so fundamental to the Bilance app, that Mihkel likens its impact to that of a utility such as electricity or water.

“Trying to measure the impact of Bank Account Data for Bilance and its users feels like trying to measure the impact of electricity for using your computer – it’s very big,” he said. “Almost 90% of trial users connect their bank account in the first session and access to aggregated, accurate data from across all of their bank accounts saves them a couple of hours of manual work a month. Meanwhile our insights aim to save them hundreds of euros.”

More of the same, please

As open banking matures, Bilance plans to keep playing to its strengths by optimising the insights it provides users. This will be made possible by a continued supply of high-quality data.

“By working with GoCardless we’re not only making our product better, we’re also helping to make open banking better overall, which in turn opens new opportunities for us – it’s a virtuous cycle,” said Mihkel.

This speaks to the fact that open banking is still in its early stages of adoption, so early mover advantages remain very much up for grabs.

“My advice is to just start,” concludes Mihkel. “If you think open banking data could improve your business or customer experience, the sooner you start the sooner you can start learning exactly how. What are you waiting for?”