Money Lover: Vietnam’s Answer to Mint Already Has Over 1.5 Million Downloads

After traveling up to Hanoi last weekend and hunting for cool startups, a lot of the people there kept recommending me to meet Ngo Xuan Huy. He’s got a 10-person team working on an app called Money Lover (the landing page isn’t online yet, so just go straight to the app links at the bottom of the page) on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. And although it’s made in Vietnam, the app is going global. Worldwide, Money Lover’s has over 1.5 million downloads.

The app is basically a finances and expenses manager for individuals. It allows you to track your spending over time and manage your monthly or annual budget. So throughout the day, I could pull out Money Lover after I make a purchase and log it into the app. At the end of the month, I could look back at my spending and tweak according to my budget. The app Mint, from the Valley, also does a similar thing but it can be tied directly to your bank account.

Huy started out with the app by himself when he was in university and used it for his own personal needs. When Money Lover went live on the Google Play Store, he was shocked to find that a lot of people were downloading it. In the next two years, he assembled a team together to do it full time. Another cool thing about the Money Lover app is that it’s currently available in 28 languages, and Huy’s team didn’t translate any of those languages (except for English). Users created the translations themselves. The top two user bases are the US and Italy.

At first, the app started out as a freemium app, they tried out a paid version but now Huy is stick with the freemium model and that has secured the majority of downloads. Users can get a premium account, which opens up more expense management features. Huy says that:

In the latest version, we rebuilt it from the ground up to integrate cloud and web features. In the future, we’re hoping to get more into family accounting, where users can connect their accounts with their loved ones to share expenses. We’re also looking to work more with payment systems or banks just like Mint does.

I’m impressed with the simplicity and design of the app, Huy also says they’re going to continue innovating on the design and providing what users need. He’s also looking for new hires to expand the team on the mobile and web fronts, and also looking for investment for scaling, if anybody out there is interested.

We recently saw a Japanese startup do a similar thing in that nation, except that that app already connects to dozens of banks.

You can download it on iOS here and on Android here and on Windows phone here.

Check out more screenshots of the Money Lover app: