1. Case Study
Is There a Business Opportunity
in Personal Finance Apps
for Android ?
Created by Stanfy

2. Introduction
We all know that Mint, Bank of America, Target, YNAB have their own
mobile apps, which customers use in one way or another to control their
incomes and spendings.
In this study we cover the apps and services with primary mobile usage.

3. The research presents most successful personal finance mobile ideas and
explores current business opportunities at the marketplace.
It covers six major app categories:
Summary
*We have not included tax planning and investment management in the study, as those are usually
extensions of the existing web services.

4. • There are a lot of myths and bias about Android app development
out there. Some of them are covered in a blog postCommon
Misconceptions About Android Apps.
E.g shares of revenues from iOS App Store and Android Google
Play are 73 percent and 27 percent, respectively. But a year before,
those numbers were more like 81 percent and 19 percent,
respectively (source: Distimo).
• While the market share of iPhone and Android is similar in US,
Android is dominating large emerging markets like India, China,
Russia and Brazil. There is tremendous international growth
opportunity for right kind of the Android apps.
Android As a Platform

5. Day-to-day Budgeting
Set your goals, track progress, never stop!
It is the most populated and diverse category that
includes variety of mobile apps.
The minimum set of functions includes income and
expense tracker, bills register, export of data, pin
protection, and basic reports.
Popular apps: Toshl Finance, MoneyWise, Saving
Made Simple, CoinKeeper.

6. Featured app – Easy Money
Money manager app that combines an
expense manager, a bill reminder, a
checkbook register, and a budget planner.
EasyMoney was featured in LifeHacker
Magazine's list of the top 5 best mobile
personal finance tools in January 2011.
Day-to-day Budgeting
Number of downloads: 1 000 000+
Number of reviews: 14 163
Rating: 4,5
Monetization: $9.95 (free trial model)

7. Coupons And Deals
Set your goals, track
progress, never stop!
Applications from this sub category will effectively save some of the
customer’s money on regular purchases.
The space is hot right now.
POPULAR APPS
The Coupons – extremely popular app to keep all the
coupons in a smartphone (99 787 reviews).
SnipSnap - SnipSnap converts all the text, images and
barcodes from the picture into a mobile-optimized offer to
redeem from your screen.

8. Featured app - Ibotta
Pays real cash for buying your
favorite products at over 40 stores
like Target, Costco, Walmart, Kroger,
Safeway, Whole Foods and more.
The payments are made to Paypal
once a person earns $5.
Coupons And Deals
Number of downloads: 500 000+
Number of reviews: 14 163
Rating: 4,5
Monetization: partnerships with
brands

9. Grocery Shopping
There is one clear leader in the field. If
you want to create an app for this
category – make sure you are very
specific (or solving specific problem).
Featured app:
Grocery IQ - #1 shopping list app.
Builds lists from the extensive product
database using text, barcode, or voice
search; syncs and share lists with other
devices and the GroceryiQ.com.

10. Investment and Finance News
Set your goals, track
progress, never stop!
It’s a sub-category, where new developer
can’t really compete with Bloomberg,
Google and Yahoo Finance.
Nevertheless, although there are some
brave app makers, who try.
Featured app:
Personal Finance – stocks in real-time,
charts, news, rates, calculators, etc.
Number of downloads: 100 000+
Number of reviews: 1 238
Rating: 4,5

11. Debt
ManagementSet your goals, track
progress, never stop!Highly populated niche with decent
apps.
The interesting fact about Debt
management apps is that developers
monetize by Freemium model with two
app versions.
Popular apps:
Debt Payoff Planner, iQuick Debt
Payoff, Debt Tracker, Debt
Planner&Calculator, I Owe You

12. Featured app – Debt Payoff
Planner
Uses snowball method and the strategy
user picks to find the customized Debt
Payoff Plan.
Month wise Snapshot View, promotional
rates, pre-payment, graphs, export to
Excel and email functions available.
Debt management
Number of downloads: 10 000+
Number of reviews: 514
Star rating: 4,5
Monetization: free and paid version
($0.99)

13. General category
Set your goals, track
progress, never stop!There are many innovative niche
apps in this category, but at the
same time the new original idea
has all the chances to take off.
Popular apps:
Receipt Ninja - Split Expenses,
GasBuddy - Find Cheap Gas,
Simple Loan Calculator, Debt
Payoff Tips&Tricks

14. Featured app – Paycheck Guru
Calculation of the net of taxes payroll
check.
The app has 3 versions: Paycheck (free, 20
daily calculations), Paycheck Calc
(unlimited calculations), Payroll guru (plus
ability to enter pre-tax and after-tax
calculations, saves different profiles).
Number of downloads (free): 100 000+
Number of reviews: 249
Rating: 3.7
Monetization: Paycheck Calc ($1.30),
Payroll guru ($4.99)
General category

15. Conclusions
Flurry recognized the importance of personal finance interest by having
“Personal Finance Geek” within their Personas list.
Successful cases of Easy Money and Debt Payoff Planner (both over 10.000
downloads for paid versions) show that Freemium and Free-to-Try
models are appropriate for specialized financial tools (day-to-day
budgeting, debt management etc).
All apps connected to shopping process (e.g Ibotta, Grocery IQ etc) can
benefit on marketing partnerships with brands, once user database is
built.

16. Ideas
Getting out debt and frugal living trends popularity in US create
business opportunities for the new app ideas with social features and
advice to customers.
Since international Android market is huge, there is a potential for
universal tools like Receipt Ninja for going globally.
The successful US specialized apps (like Paycheck Calc) can be
adapted and localized for the largest emerging Android markets.

17. Stanfy is a mobile design and development company focused on
mobile UI/UX and native iOS &Android app development.
Since 2007 we have helped more than 60 companies and startups to
explore mobile market and to make beautiful native apps for iPhone,
iPad, Android smartphones and tablets.
Visit us at stanfy.com