Until now, Seattle startup Doxo has been pretty secretive about what it’s up to. All it’s revealed is that it’s backed by Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions and Mohr Davidow Ventures, and that it’s been developing a paperless billing product.
Today, however, co-founder and chief executive Steve Shivers gave me a demo of the service. And the site is now handing out invites and letting in users.
Shivers and his team tried to answer this question: If so many of us are Web-savvy, why haven’t we gone completely paperless? Shivers said 55 percent of US households pay some of their bills online, but only 15 percent of them have gotten rid of paper completely. The gap between the two numbers includes people who still pay some of their bills the old-fashioned way, as well as people who still receive their bills and other messages in the mail, even if they pay online.
There are a couple of problems with the current way of doing things, Shivers said. Customers have to go to separate websites for each bill, and it’s an impossible headache to log in to 15 or 20 different accounts each month.
Doxo should help push users towards a state of complete paperlessness. It offers an online dashboard for managing each account where you need to pay bills. Users will be able to upload their bills (whether they downloaded it from the company website or scan a copy they received in the mail) and store their login name and password for each account. That way, they’ll have all of their billing information in one place. Then, if the billing company decides to create an account with Doxo, they can send you your bills via the Doxo website, and they can send other messages, such as a revised privacy policy.
All of the documents belong to you, Shivers said. Doxo can’t sell the data to anyone else, and you can download each bill whenever you want.
The approach sounds a little like Mint, the popular Intuit-acquired personal finance service. They both bring multiple accounts together and make the data easy to understand. At the same time, by focusing on bills, not financial institutions, Doxo is tackling a different problem. Plus, it has a different business model — instead of making money when it convinces users to sign up for different accounts or credit cards, Doxo will charge businesses, since they’re saving money by not sending paper bills. Businesses supposedly spend $30 billion a year to mail 50 billion bills to customers.
One question right now is whether the service can be useful even if the companies sending you bills haven’t signed up with Doxo. Shivers predicted that the experience will vary from user to user. Some will be fine just using Doxo as a repository for bills and account data. Others will find that a number of the businesses they need to pay are in Doxo already. And yes, there will be a group that doesn’t get much use out of the site right away, but they might sign up for the companies whose bills they want to pay, and then they’ll receive notifications as businesses join.
There are some shortcomings right now — mainly the fact that you can’t make payments on the Doxo site. Doxo just gives you the bill, hands you over to the billing site, then you can mark the bill as paid in Doxo once you’re done. But Shivers said Doxo is definitely looking to add in-site payment features, mobile features, and more.
Next Story: SkillSlate grabs $1.1M to find local service providers Previous Story: Symbian CEO Lee Williams steps down
A survey released today by Javelin Strategy & Research, which serves financial institutions, found in August that nearly one in five Americans doesn't monitor or manage their personal finances. That rate is double what it was just a year ago. Despite the fact the recession has made it more important than ever to carefully track our money, when it comes to personal finances, 19% of Americans stuck their head in the sand. A year before, another survey had the figure at just 8%.
More anxiety-induced news: The percentage of Americans who say they sometimes log onto their checking account balances with their banks' websites dropped to 46%, down 13 points from 59% a year ago. Even those who track their money by pen and paper dropped, from 50% to 46%.
"It's a natural human reaction to stress: 'Maybe if I don't look at it, it will go away.'" explains the study's co-author, senior analyst Mark Schwanhausser. "I think you have fewer people checking their finances online because they don't like what they're seeing. 'I'm going to be a financial sleepwalker. I'm not going to look.'"
Schwanhausser's prescription for the problem involves convincing America's major financial institutions that they're doing a lousy job helping make it easier and less stressful for their customers to track their money. "It's not enough to tell you how to fix the toilet," he says. "You've got to have the wrench."
Yet despite the fact that most Americans' money resides at a bank, few banks are interested in furnishing financial planning tools. Right now, Schwanhausser argues, most people are required to log into a wide variety of websites to track their money. For example, 75% of Americans who have a credit card get it from somewhere other than their primary bank, meaning their finances are scattered across many websites, unreconciled.
When people do turn to their bank's websites, he argues, the financial planning tools are nearly non-existent despite the fact our society increasingly demands greater personal control through technology. "Today's online banking is like having avocado green appliances from the 1970s. It just doesn't cut it," says Schwanhausser.
Schwanhausser is using the survey to convince banks that it will actually endear customers to them if they put personal finance tools front and center on their sites, helping customers paint a clear picture of their own financial habits. He's pressing them to develop systems, both on the Web and through mobile apps, that can draw in customers' information from other sites, such as credit cards and mortgage lenders, so financial care-taking can be a one-stop process.
So far, banks and lenders have been slow to use existing technology to make money management a less daunting chore. Part of the issue is that many banks don't want to acknowledge competitors by drawing in account balances from elsewhere. Banks also stand to make money off poor financial planning through penalties and fees. Like a doctor who makes money off treating disease, promoting financial good health does not on the surface appear to be in a bank's best interest.
"You can't manage what you don't measure," says Schwanhausser. "And if the bank's not going to provide it for you, you have to go get it in other places."
He recommends existing aggregators such as Mint.com, which pulls your data from multiple sources and lays it out in spreadsheets and in spending plans, as a model for what all the banks should be doing for their customers.
He also notes that Bank of America's "My Portfolio" and Wells Fargo's "My Savings Plan" are two fledgling, if little-known, bank-created features that are slowly reaching toward the sort of comprehensive personal finance planning features he advocates.
As long as it remains difficult or scary, though, when it comes to their finances, Americans will remain more likely to use the Ostrich Method.
benchcraft company scam
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>
On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...
Scripting <b>News</b>: Design challenge: River of <b>News</b> in HTML
The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...
Great Dolly <b>News</b>! | PerezHilton.com
Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...
bench craft company scam
Until now, Seattle startup Doxo has been pretty secretive about what it’s up to. All it’s revealed is that it’s backed by Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions and Mohr Davidow Ventures, and that it’s been developing a paperless billing product.
Today, however, co-founder and chief executive Steve Shivers gave me a demo of the service. And the site is now handing out invites and letting in users.
Shivers and his team tried to answer this question: If so many of us are Web-savvy, why haven’t we gone completely paperless? Shivers said 55 percent of US households pay some of their bills online, but only 15 percent of them have gotten rid of paper completely. The gap between the two numbers includes people who still pay some of their bills the old-fashioned way, as well as people who still receive their bills and other messages in the mail, even if they pay online.
There are a couple of problems with the current way of doing things, Shivers said. Customers have to go to separate websites for each bill, and it’s an impossible headache to log in to 15 or 20 different accounts each month.
Doxo should help push users towards a state of complete paperlessness. It offers an online dashboard for managing each account where you need to pay bills. Users will be able to upload their bills (whether they downloaded it from the company website or scan a copy they received in the mail) and store their login name and password for each account. That way, they’ll have all of their billing information in one place. Then, if the billing company decides to create an account with Doxo, they can send you your bills via the Doxo website, and they can send other messages, such as a revised privacy policy.
All of the documents belong to you, Shivers said. Doxo can’t sell the data to anyone else, and you can download each bill whenever you want.
The approach sounds a little like Mint, the popular Intuit-acquired personal finance service. They both bring multiple accounts together and make the data easy to understand. At the same time, by focusing on bills, not financial institutions, Doxo is tackling a different problem. Plus, it has a different business model — instead of making money when it convinces users to sign up for different accounts or credit cards, Doxo will charge businesses, since they’re saving money by not sending paper bills. Businesses supposedly spend $30 billion a year to mail 50 billion bills to customers.
One question right now is whether the service can be useful even if the companies sending you bills haven’t signed up with Doxo. Shivers predicted that the experience will vary from user to user. Some will be fine just using Doxo as a repository for bills and account data. Others will find that a number of the businesses they need to pay are in Doxo already. And yes, there will be a group that doesn’t get much use out of the site right away, but they might sign up for the companies whose bills they want to pay, and then they’ll receive notifications as businesses join.
There are some shortcomings right now — mainly the fact that you can’t make payments on the Doxo site. Doxo just gives you the bill, hands you over to the billing site, then you can mark the bill as paid in Doxo once you’re done. But Shivers said Doxo is definitely looking to add in-site payment features, mobile features, and more.
Next Story: SkillSlate grabs $1.1M to find local service providers Previous Story: Symbian CEO Lee Williams steps down
A survey released today by Javelin Strategy & Research, which serves financial institutions, found in August that nearly one in five Americans doesn't monitor or manage their personal finances. That rate is double what it was just a year ago. Despite the fact the recession has made it more important than ever to carefully track our money, when it comes to personal finances, 19% of Americans stuck their head in the sand. A year before, another survey had the figure at just 8%.
More anxiety-induced news: The percentage of Americans who say they sometimes log onto their checking account balances with their banks' websites dropped to 46%, down 13 points from 59% a year ago. Even those who track their money by pen and paper dropped, from 50% to 46%.
"It's a natural human reaction to stress: 'Maybe if I don't look at it, it will go away.'" explains the study's co-author, senior analyst Mark Schwanhausser. "I think you have fewer people checking their finances online because they don't like what they're seeing. 'I'm going to be a financial sleepwalker. I'm not going to look.'"
Schwanhausser's prescription for the problem involves convincing America's major financial institutions that they're doing a lousy job helping make it easier and less stressful for their customers to track their money. "It's not enough to tell you how to fix the toilet," he says. "You've got to have the wrench."
Yet despite the fact that most Americans' money resides at a bank, few banks are interested in furnishing financial planning tools. Right now, Schwanhausser argues, most people are required to log into a wide variety of websites to track their money. For example, 75% of Americans who have a credit card get it from somewhere other than their primary bank, meaning their finances are scattered across many websites, unreconciled.
When people do turn to their bank's websites, he argues, the financial planning tools are nearly non-existent despite the fact our society increasingly demands greater personal control through technology. "Today's online banking is like having avocado green appliances from the 1970s. It just doesn't cut it," says Schwanhausser.
Schwanhausser is using the survey to convince banks that it will actually endear customers to them if they put personal finance tools front and center on their sites, helping customers paint a clear picture of their own financial habits. He's pressing them to develop systems, both on the Web and through mobile apps, that can draw in customers' information from other sites, such as credit cards and mortgage lenders, so financial care-taking can be a one-stop process.
So far, banks and lenders have been slow to use existing technology to make money management a less daunting chore. Part of the issue is that many banks don't want to acknowledge competitors by drawing in account balances from elsewhere. Banks also stand to make money off poor financial planning through penalties and fees. Like a doctor who makes money off treating disease, promoting financial good health does not on the surface appear to be in a bank's best interest.
"You can't manage what you don't measure," says Schwanhausser. "And if the bank's not going to provide it for you, you have to go get it in other places."
He recommends existing aggregators such as Mint.com, which pulls your data from multiple sources and lays it out in spreadsheets and in spending plans, as a model for what all the banks should be doing for their customers.
He also notes that Bank of America's "My Portfolio" and Wells Fargo's "My Savings Plan" are two fledgling, if little-known, bank-created features that are slowly reaching toward the sort of comprehensive personal finance planning features he advocates.
As long as it remains difficult or scary, though, when it comes to their finances, Americans will remain more likely to use the Ostrich Method.
bench craft company scam
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>
On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...
Scripting <b>News</b>: Design challenge: River of <b>News</b> in HTML
The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...
Great Dolly <b>News</b>! | PerezHilton.com
Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...
benchcraft company scam
benchcraft company scam
benchcraft company scam
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>
On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...
Scripting <b>News</b>: Design challenge: River of <b>News</b> in HTML
The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...
Great Dolly <b>News</b>! | PerezHilton.com
Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...
bench craft company scam
Until now, Seattle startup Doxo has been pretty secretive about what it’s up to. All it’s revealed is that it’s backed by Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions and Mohr Davidow Ventures, and that it’s been developing a paperless billing product.
Today, however, co-founder and chief executive Steve Shivers gave me a demo of the service. And the site is now handing out invites and letting in users.
Shivers and his team tried to answer this question: If so many of us are Web-savvy, why haven’t we gone completely paperless? Shivers said 55 percent of US households pay some of their bills online, but only 15 percent of them have gotten rid of paper completely. The gap between the two numbers includes people who still pay some of their bills the old-fashioned way, as well as people who still receive their bills and other messages in the mail, even if they pay online.
There are a couple of problems with the current way of doing things, Shivers said. Customers have to go to separate websites for each bill, and it’s an impossible headache to log in to 15 or 20 different accounts each month.
Doxo should help push users towards a state of complete paperlessness. It offers an online dashboard for managing each account where you need to pay bills. Users will be able to upload their bills (whether they downloaded it from the company website or scan a copy they received in the mail) and store their login name and password for each account. That way, they’ll have all of their billing information in one place. Then, if the billing company decides to create an account with Doxo, they can send you your bills via the Doxo website, and they can send other messages, such as a revised privacy policy.
All of the documents belong to you, Shivers said. Doxo can’t sell the data to anyone else, and you can download each bill whenever you want.
The approach sounds a little like Mint, the popular Intuit-acquired personal finance service. They both bring multiple accounts together and make the data easy to understand. At the same time, by focusing on bills, not financial institutions, Doxo is tackling a different problem. Plus, it has a different business model — instead of making money when it convinces users to sign up for different accounts or credit cards, Doxo will charge businesses, since they’re saving money by not sending paper bills. Businesses supposedly spend $30 billion a year to mail 50 billion bills to customers.
One question right now is whether the service can be useful even if the companies sending you bills haven’t signed up with Doxo. Shivers predicted that the experience will vary from user to user. Some will be fine just using Doxo as a repository for bills and account data. Others will find that a number of the businesses they need to pay are in Doxo already. And yes, there will be a group that doesn’t get much use out of the site right away, but they might sign up for the companies whose bills they want to pay, and then they’ll receive notifications as businesses join.
There are some shortcomings right now — mainly the fact that you can’t make payments on the Doxo site. Doxo just gives you the bill, hands you over to the billing site, then you can mark the bill as paid in Doxo once you’re done. But Shivers said Doxo is definitely looking to add in-site payment features, mobile features, and more.
Next Story: SkillSlate grabs $1.1M to find local service providers Previous Story: Symbian CEO Lee Williams steps down
A survey released today by Javelin Strategy & Research, which serves financial institutions, found in August that nearly one in five Americans doesn't monitor or manage their personal finances. That rate is double what it was just a year ago. Despite the fact the recession has made it more important than ever to carefully track our money, when it comes to personal finances, 19% of Americans stuck their head in the sand. A year before, another survey had the figure at just 8%.
More anxiety-induced news: The percentage of Americans who say they sometimes log onto their checking account balances with their banks' websites dropped to 46%, down 13 points from 59% a year ago. Even those who track their money by pen and paper dropped, from 50% to 46%.
"It's a natural human reaction to stress: 'Maybe if I don't look at it, it will go away.'" explains the study's co-author, senior analyst Mark Schwanhausser. "I think you have fewer people checking their finances online because they don't like what they're seeing. 'I'm going to be a financial sleepwalker. I'm not going to look.'"
Schwanhausser's prescription for the problem involves convincing America's major financial institutions that they're doing a lousy job helping make it easier and less stressful for their customers to track their money. "It's not enough to tell you how to fix the toilet," he says. "You've got to have the wrench."
Yet despite the fact that most Americans' money resides at a bank, few banks are interested in furnishing financial planning tools. Right now, Schwanhausser argues, most people are required to log into a wide variety of websites to track their money. For example, 75% of Americans who have a credit card get it from somewhere other than their primary bank, meaning their finances are scattered across many websites, unreconciled.
When people do turn to their bank's websites, he argues, the financial planning tools are nearly non-existent despite the fact our society increasingly demands greater personal control through technology. "Today's online banking is like having avocado green appliances from the 1970s. It just doesn't cut it," says Schwanhausser.
Schwanhausser is using the survey to convince banks that it will actually endear customers to them if they put personal finance tools front and center on their sites, helping customers paint a clear picture of their own financial habits. He's pressing them to develop systems, both on the Web and through mobile apps, that can draw in customers' information from other sites, such as credit cards and mortgage lenders, so financial care-taking can be a one-stop process.
So far, banks and lenders have been slow to use existing technology to make money management a less daunting chore. Part of the issue is that many banks don't want to acknowledge competitors by drawing in account balances from elsewhere. Banks also stand to make money off poor financial planning through penalties and fees. Like a doctor who makes money off treating disease, promoting financial good health does not on the surface appear to be in a bank's best interest.
"You can't manage what you don't measure," says Schwanhausser. "And if the bank's not going to provide it for you, you have to go get it in other places."
He recommends existing aggregators such as Mint.com, which pulls your data from multiple sources and lays it out in spreadsheets and in spending plans, as a model for what all the banks should be doing for their customers.
He also notes that Bank of America's "My Portfolio" and Wells Fargo's "My Savings Plan" are two fledgling, if little-known, bank-created features that are slowly reaching toward the sort of comprehensive personal finance planning features he advocates.
As long as it remains difficult or scary, though, when it comes to their finances, Americans will remain more likely to use the Ostrich Method.
bench craft company scam
bench craft company scam
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>
On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...
Scripting <b>News</b>: Design challenge: River of <b>News</b> in HTML
The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...
Great Dolly <b>News</b>! | PerezHilton.com
Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...
bench craft company scam
benchcraft company scam
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>
On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...
Scripting <b>News</b>: Design challenge: River of <b>News</b> in HTML
The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...
Great Dolly <b>News</b>! | PerezHilton.com
Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...
benchcraft company scam
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>
On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...
Scripting <b>News</b>: Design challenge: River of <b>News</b> in HTML
The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...
Great Dolly <b>News</b>! | PerezHilton.com
Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...
benchcraft company scam
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Fox <b>News</b> Contributors Mock <b>...</b>
On the video, Miller, Trotter, Scott, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican and Fox News contributor James Pinkerton are seen preparing to go on the air when Miller says, "Oh, I do have something to say about Palin. I even prepared it. ...
Scripting <b>News</b>: Design challenge: River of <b>News</b> in HTML
The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...
Great Dolly <b>News</b>! | PerezHilton.com
Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...
how to lose weight fast benchcraft company scam
bench craft company scam
benchcraft company scam
No comments:
Post a Comment