Moneytree wants to help ‘appwardly mobile consumers’ wrangle their personal finances (#StartupAsia Arena)

Paul Chapman, CEO of Tokyo-based startup Moneytree, took the stage at Startup Asia Tokyo 2014’s Arena pitch battle to show the audience how they could use his personal finance app to make more informed decisions with their hard-earned money.

You might not have heard of Moneytree if you live outside of Japan, but Moneytree it’s a pretty big deal in the domestic market. Launched in April 2013, Moneytree was awarded Best App of 2013 by the Japanese App Store – and it comes pre-loaded on every iPhone demo device in all of Japan’s Apple retail locations.

Moneytree, available exclusively for iOS, allows users to visualize their spending habits in one convenient location by connecting to more than 1,300 Japanese banks and credit card companies. In July, the startup also added point tracking for the country’s ubiquitous reward cards. If you’re more of a cash-and-carry kind of person, don’t fret – Moneytree also allows users to manually input paper transactions.

Financial data, rife with charts and graphs, rarely looks sexy, but Moneytree manages to offer a simple and attractive user experience based on three cards: balances (for banks, credit cards, and digital money), spending (intelligently categorized so you can see if you’re spending too much on dining out or shopping, for example), and point balances (including when they are set to expire). All a user has to do is authorize their accounts and they’re free to customize the app as they please.

Investors have faith that Moneytree will continue being a hit with Japanese consumers. The service landed US$1.6 million in seed funding last December, led by DG Incubation and (perhaps unsurprisingly) joined by household names in the finance sector: MasterCard, Morgan Stanley, and PayPal.

See: MoneyTree Launches as a Mint.com for Japan

Do the Startup Arena judges share the same level of enthusiasm?

The judging panel seemed impressed, offering only questions instead of critique.

Yasuhiko Yurimoto, founder and CEO at Global Brain, asked Chapman how his service differentiates itself from competitors like Moneyforward.

“It’s not an industry if you’re the only player in your space. Were happy to have competition,” Chapman replied. He said that Moneyforward appeals to men in their 40s who are well-versed in the world of finance. Moneytree, on the other hand, is designed for anyone – no financial background required.

David Milstein, head of Japan, at Fidelity Growth Partners Japan, asked about further potential beyond the app itself. Chapman said that there’s hype about digitization of health records, but not for financial history. Knowing something like the exact day when your credit card is paying out and exactly how much it will cost makes a user’s life easier.