Yolt has set itself a mission to revamp the way people think about managing their personal finances. CEO Frank Jan Risseeuw speaks to Briony Richter about how the app aims to enable users to ‘unthink’ money
Yolt is ING’s smart money app in the UK. It gives people financial control by allowing them to actively manage their personal finances through easy budgeting, spending categorisation and deal-finding.
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CEO Frank Jan Risseeuw tells EPI: “We want to help consumers be smarter with their finances through enabling them to sync, see and do more with their money.
“Simple to use and free to download, we are constantly reviewing and developing the app to take the hard work out of managing their money for our users, so they can get on with enjoying their lives more.”
The app allows customers to view all their finances in one place. Rather than insisting on moving all bank accounts to the fintech’s own offering, Yolt enables customers to simply connect their accounts to the money app to support their analysis of how they spend.
Explaining why Yolt’s offering surpasses others in a very busy space, Risseeuw says:
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By GlobalData“At Yolt we are bank-agnostic, enabling users to view their accounts and credit cards together in one smart place. We also work hand in hand with our very vocal Yolt community.
“Putting our users at the heart of everything we do is a key differentiator, as we take their feedback on board for every single touchpoint of the app. For example, we have been closely studying our community’s pain points and behaviours associated with payments to help understand how Yolt can be a truly useful payments tool for our users – watch this space!”
Once a user has integrated their banking history into the app, Yolt will start categorising their data into different sections.
From there, the user can personalise categories and add more or less money to whichever they want. The categories, and the amounts in each, are viewed on a single page. The most frequently used categories include shopping, bills, eating out and transport.
All accounts and spending data can be seen at the same time, making it extremely convenient and quick for those who are shopping on the go and wanting to use different accounts. In the UK, the app works with all major high-street banks, including Barclays, RBS, HSBC and Santander.
Open and easy
Open Banking has cleared the way for a more flexible approach to banking, and, in theory, PSD2 enables banking to become more open and easy.
Customers can give permission to authorise third parties to access their banking details without having to provide login details. This gives control to those the users want to give permission, as they decide the information they are happy to share, with which provider, and the length of time they are willing to share it.
Yolt is at the forefront of the Open Banking revolution, and views it as a rare opportunity to transform banking.
Risseeuw explains: “Open Banking is still in its roll-out stage, and we believe the true potential is yet to be fully realised.
“However, it has already allowed people to start taking back control of their finances, and our users are proof of that. Through driving competition and innovation in the market, we see many of our fintech friends launching new initiatives that all put you, the user, first,” he says.
“We are very proud of Yolt’s position at the forefront of this – we are currently connected to seven of the CMA9 via Open Banking APIs, making the first ever connection with Lloyds Banking Group earlier this year.
“We are confident that this banking revolution can and will transform the way in which people manage their finances. At Yolt, we are already doing this by putting people back in control of their finances through enabling them to sync, see and do more with their money, and we hope this will be replicated across the banking sector.”
Open Banking will ultimately support individuals in managing their personal finances and make it easier to compare current account details and other offers.
Yolt currently has over 300,000 registered users, and Risseeuw notes that the number is rising daily. The app has added over 33 banks to its platform, including 13 API connections, and is the first app to successfully complete the Open Banking integration with one of the CMA9 providers.
Exciting news is also on the horizon for the smart money app. Concluding, Risseeuw states:
“Ultimately, we want to be the only money app that users need on their phone. We are working hard to achieve this through the addition of more partners, payment options and a selection of innovative features planned over the course of the year.
“We also announced the very exciting news that we are expanding into Europe later this year. We are kicking this off with a launch in Italy in September, followed by France shortly afterwards, and look forward to encouraging users across Europe to ‘unthink’ money.”
