FamilyBiz wants to be the ‘Spotify’ of financial tools

A new app called FamilyBiz is hoping to revolutionize the family financial management system for families. As opposed to a regular banking and savings app, FamilyBiz allows parents or partners to ‘team-up’ and view tracked spending and set income goals for a variety of financial services.

“In the way that couples and families can operate an ecosystem for music within Spotify, we believe in the same for the financial industry,” FamilyBiz Founder and CEO Oran Goldstein said in an interview with CTech.

FamilyBiz gathers user information from banks, credit cars, insurance companies, investments, and more, and simplifies everything by putting it in one place. Unlike other finance apps that can help families with spending, like Mint or Wally, FamilyBiz aims to be an entire ecosystem for all financial tools.

The global Personal Finance Software market, which was valued at $796 million in 2016, is estimated to reach $1.2 billion by 2023.

Aside from storing and showing family savings, FamilyBiz also uses technology to learn the spending and saving habits of each family, offering them new opportunities to save money through better insurance policies via the app’s platform.

Naturally, questions often arise around new financial mobile services that rely on sensitive data to provide insights to benefit users. Goldstein, aware of this, makes sure the platform is as safe as possible.

“In our company, privacy is the core,” he told CTech. “We look at that as the most important thing. This is why the technology is made in the way that even our developers can’t reach your backend.” According to Goldstein, the support team cannot reach user data and relies on the users to voluntarily provide the details of any spending activity that is performed on the app.”

“Things are connected to your personal ID, so regulations in Israel make us ensure they are a family member”, he explains while describing the ‘linking’ process. “If I want to add someone, I invite them and they need to accept the invitation, and then only they can ask for the financial services.”

Once a partner is linked to the platform, the two members can organize all of their financials through the single app. While it can be used to help monitor the spending of children, the app is currently restricted to two users —each parent —due to regulatory restrictions.

“We’re thinking about the future and maybe we will build a children’s app with a different look and feel because it would need to look and act differently,” explains Goldstein. “Right now, only the parents can care for the children on the financial service front.”

FamilyBiz is approaching 10,000 users and plans to expand into European territories. Currently, it is only in Hebrew but the company, which employs eight people, is building a multi-language app for wider use on an international scale.