Japanese personal finance app locks in funding from Salesforce, 3 megabanks

Moneytree, the Japanese app that’s all about helping people manage their spending, has raised an undisclosed amount of series A funding from investors, led by one of the world’s largest tech companies, Salesforce. The venture capital arms of Japan’s three big banks – Mizuho Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation – also participated in the round.

The iPhone app links to users’ bank accounts and credit cards, allowing them to track in real time money that’s flowing in and out. It notifies users of large transactions, low balances, soon-to-expire loyalty points and miles, and upcoming bills to help them avoid unpleasant surprises.

Moneytree uses machine-learning algorithms to process data from each person and categorize transactions based on period and type. Users can also manually input their expenditures to better track where their money goes monthly.

Moneytree offers in-app purchases – Moneytree Plus for premium features and Moneytree Pro for corporate accounts.

The app was created by Australian entrepreneur Paul Chapman and his co-founders Mark Makdad and Ross Sharrott, whom he met while working at Tokyo-based professional services firm enWorld. A graduate of business, banking, and finance, Chapman sold his first company cvMail, a recruitment platform, to Thomson Reuters in 2007.

Chapman and his team will use the funds they just raised to grow Moneytree’s user base and get more partners for the company’s newly launched product, MT LINK, which is basically its API. With MT LINK, users may share historical financial data with Moneytree’s partner companies; for example, they may automatically import their data into Yayoi’s tax software or see their points in DNP’s household budget-tracking app Receipi.

Moneytree has had over 820,000 downloads to date, but it declined to reveal how many are active.

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