A few weeks ago Andrew at Jwaala took me through a screencast tour of Jwaala’s MoneyTracker. I’ve been spending the last few days cramming a little more on the other PFMs to get a better picture of the category. Here are a few bullets that stood out to me from my tour and other research. Before I get to those, let me say that I’m not going to try to drop deep, meaningful evaluations of the major PFM products and their implications for the industry. That’s a little outside the area of my knowledge.

So, without further delay, and without use of the terms “game-changing” or “added value”, here are some things I think are pretty cool about MoneyTracker:

Search Their search capabilities are incredibly intuitive. If I’m trying to find a transaction from three months ago at Costco that was around $100, any of these search terms will work:

• costco
• costco last month
• costco last month around $100
• 1/10/2008 to 2/30/2008 costco around $100

I’ve tried similar searches in other apps with less success. That isn’t a specific poo-poo on the other PFM products, I’m just rarely satisfied with any site’s search capabilities (iStockphoto, I’m looking at you. With this emoticon >:O ).

RSS Let’s take the search I just mentioned: “costco around $100.” On the search results page, right next to the search box, you’ll see a link to “make this search an ALERT” which will automatically create an email alert for any transactions meeting those terms. And to the right of that is an RSS icon (image above). MoneyTracker automatically generates an RSS feed for any wild search term you come up with that yields a result. There’s no opening a settings panel or anything. It just makes the feed for you, which brings me to the next feature.

Widgets Now let’s take the RSS feed we just got from our handy little natural language search and make it a widget. MoneyTracker offers a very Netvibes-y, iGoogle-y dashboard page of various widgets displaying the RSS feeds for your specific transactions. You can drag them and everything.

But if there are a few you really want to keep an eye on without having to always be logged into your online banking, you can just as easily plug the feeds into Netvibes, iGoogle, etc.

Ads This is the feature I got the most excited about in terms of it’s relevancy to Credit Unions: Contextual Ads.

MoneyTracker is different from Wesabe and Mint in that is it tied directly to a Credit Union’s online banking system (Surely I’m not breaking that news.). From Jwaala’s home page:

MoneyTracker is designed to deploy seamlessly with your existing online banking solutions (such as Harland and and Symitar etc…). To your members, MoneyTracker appears as a branded addon to online banking that brings a much needed set financial management capabilities.

One of the things we emphasize strongly when speaking on design and site planning is cross-pollinating the site. For example, on your CU’s Auto Auctions page, have a box of action links linking to other services that legitimately apply to the content, in this case, Auto Loans might be a good choice.

Usually all that cross-pollination ends abruptly at the online banking interface. Not with MoneyTracker. You get to continue communication with your members in your online banking software. Aside from visually branding with logos and graphics and color, you can setup contextual ads with an interface very similar to Google’s AdWords, only Google isn’t sending the ads, you are, for your CU’s services. You set ads for all of your different services and let the system serve them up appropriately depending on the content on the page.

So a member searching their statements for “auto” or “home” to see how much they are spending in those areas would pull in ads for your auto loans or refinancing info, etc. And the ads link back to your main site, no one else’s.

As I said, these are just a few of my faves from my tour. Go read more about them and a few more on Jwaala’s Better Online Banking site.

Today Trey posted this message to Twitter (links added):

“Credit Karma friggin rocks. Go to netbanker, grab the code and get your account.”

He’s right, it rocks. Here’s how CK’s free credit score service works (from creditkarma.com):

Credit Karma™ shows personalized offers based on your credit profile. These offers are from partners who share our vision of consumer empowerment. Rest assured, Credit Karma™ will never share your personal information.

The “offers” interface is relevant, clean, and unimposing. Users can comment on an offer, vote it thumbs up/thumbs down, or pass it along to a friend.

Check it out. What do you think?

FinovateStartup is right around the corner, and if it’s anything like last October’s conference tickets will be sold out soon. Finovate and FinovateStartup are financial innovation and technology conferences put on by tech+finance guru Jim Bruene of Netbanker.

Startup companies demoing their products (Jim’s blog says “No PowerPoint slides allowed!”) include: Andera, Boulevard R., Buxfer, Motley Fool CAPS, ClairMail, Credit Karma, First ROI, Jwaala, Lending Club, Mint, Prosper, SmartHippo, Unified Money, and the rockstars from Wesabe (see how big a fan I am of Wesabe here).

It’s a stockpile of some of the coolest things to happen to money since they invented “buying stuff.”

Watch videos from last year’s Finovate here, and sign up to attend here.

The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Beyond Payday Loans” last week, written cooperatively by political cartoons Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In the article, they discuss the $8 billion problem of payday lending.

Here’s a snippet:

Here is one initiative that can unite progressives and conservatives as well as business leaders and community activists: helping the “unbanked” enter the financial mainstream by opening checking and savings accounts, and working collaboratively with financial institutions and community groups to develop and market products that work for this untapped market. This will put money in the pockets of individuals and grow the economy. And it won’t cost taxpayers a dime.

Is it just me, or do Bill and Arnold seem to be channeling the credit union philosophy?

Two credit unions tackling the problem are Wright-Patt CU with their StretchPay loan and Prospera CU, with GoodMoney.

StretchPay is a short-term loan of either $250 or $500 available to Wright-Patt members. The loan comes with a low 18% APR, and is payable over 30 days.

GoodMoney, with branches located in Goodwill stores, offers short term loans at half the rate of the average payday lender, lower-fee check-cashing, bill payment options, wire transferring, and financial education through Goodwill’s Financial Information and Service Center.

Check out this video on GoodMoney from the 2007 Herb Wegner Awards:

Both initiatives stem out of the National Credit Union Foundation’s program REAL Solutions. Full disclosure, REAL Solutions is a client of ours – it’s how I’ve been exposed to some of the awesome things they’re doing for the movement. REAL Solutions is helping credit unions develop products to serve low-income and unbanked consumers.

When we were discussing this, Charlie asked this question:

Are CUs really helping people by making it easier and the rates lower, rather than helping people get into a better financial habit?

I think offering attractive alternatives to predatory lending is step one in the process, but it is kind of a band-aid on the greater question – How do you truly effect people’s financial behavior? Can it be done?

(Also, hat tip to Payment News for highlighting the WSJ article.)