Easy Wallet. From idea to project implementation
The authors of the Easy Wallet project, residents of the QIWI Universe accelerator, Sasha and Rustem, talk about how they started and where the project is going now.
Good day!
')
We would like to tell you how the idea came to us, how we started the project and where we are going. We are Alexander Ivanov and Rustem Feizkhanov .
In 2012, we entered the magistracy of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology . The first year we studied at MIT , where we met. One evening Rustem noticed that it was inconvenient to keep track of several bank cards. At the same time, you will not refuse them: a scholarship comes to one, a salary to another, and profitable interests are charged to the third on the third.
Remembering that banks send SMS every time you spend money somewhere, we thought to write an application that parses such SMS and shows balances on all its cards. We went through fellow students from Russia, collected SMS from several banks, wrote down a raw but working application. And they postponed this topic for a while, because I wanted to finish my studies.
Returning to Russia in 2013, we thought, why not throw the application on Google Play? We combed our very raw prototype, added several UI elements. The result was simply a raw prototype, which, however, parsed the SMS of a dozen banks. We threw it on Google Play.
Now I am glad that we then had the idea to throw the application on Google Play. Despite the fact that we received several one-star reviews like “SMS of such a bank is not parsing!”, There were some positive reviews that inspired us. And we decided to work on.
What is the main problem of personal finance and personal accounting services? Most likely, it is necessary to record all expenses every time. A large number of people that we interviewed (practiced, so to speak, Customer Development, which, by the way, was very extensively consecrated at Habré) told us that they kept records of their expenses for 2-3 months, and then it became boring to load each time check.
How can SMS recognition from a bank solve this problem? Imagine that most of your expenses are automatically entered into the desired category and entered into the general list of expenses! It just will remove the most unpleasant part in the maintenance of the budget.
Sounds like a fairy tale, right?
We very quickly met with reality. Firstly, access to SMS-cam is only in Android, and under iOS and Windows Phone it is impossible (well, or only if you dance for a very long time with a tambourine, which the users will not appreciate).
Secondly, there are 850 banks in Russia and each has its own SMS alert templates. It is easy to collect 20, but how to collect templates of at least 100 banks?
In general, thelaw was not written for fools, according to the horoscope I am a ram , despite skepticism, we continued to work on the application.
And it took us several weeks to collect SMS templates from banks. First involved friends. Then friends of friends. Then they began to go to banks independently, arrange cards, carry out several transactions and receive the necessary set of SMS templates. There were so many bank cards that we could easily spread the party into the “fool”.
Then they began to cut the application . And at some point a question came to my mind: if we show the user information on the cards of various banks, why not recommend him a card of the bank most profitable for him? After all, if an application can pull its transactions out of SMS, then it is possible to mathematically calculate the amount of benefits for each of the N banks in Russia and show the best option!
And here we came to the conclusion that they began to show in the application not only card balances, but also a list of the most profitable cards for a person with the calculation of benefits.
But why then be limited only by the application? So we made the site. If in the application information was taken from SMS, then on the website you just need to enter your income and expenses manually (code name of shamanism: “play with sliders”).
A reasonable question: how much can a more profitable card bring?
And here we are shocked. Compared to anySberbank, an ordinary Russian bank, whose cards are used by millions of people, the most profitable bank for a person can bring in a year 10-30 thousand rubles more.
So we decided to refocus from an application that processes SMS from banks to a service that selects the most profitable financial services. In addition to debit cards, we now have a choice of credit cards. We plan to expand the list of selected financial products.
In the spring, we submitted an application to the IIDF and QIWI Universe accelerators. According to personal feelings, the selection in the QIWI Universe was more difficult: in IIDF, besides the online application, there was a Skype interview and several calls, and in the QIWI Universe there were two face-to-face meetings with a presentation. In May, an invitation came to the FRIA internal accelerator, and in June - to the QIWI Universe. We decided to choose a program from QIWI, since QIWI is related to payments and financial issues.
Since mid-July, we have been working in consultation with QIWI and the MSU Business Incubator . It should be noted that we are pleased to work in the QIWI Universe not only because they help us with connections and exits to the right people, but also because it is very interesting to listen to opinion from more experienced guys almost every day.
Finally, I would like to answer a few questions that probably came from an inquisitive reader:
1. Applications that recognize SMS already exist before you / already exist.
At the time we started our work, we found only one application on Google Play that normally processed SMS, but by that time it had not been updated for two years.
After the launch of our application, there appeared both personal finance accounting applications, which added SMS recognition to themselves, and simply applications that are based on SMS recognition. There are several such examples, and these are our competitors. We love to compete with strong rivals, so we wish them every success!
2. On your website and in the application often some small banks are the most profitable. Are they dangerous?
In fact, amounts of money up to 700 thousand rubles are insured on bank cards, so there is no particular risk. And so - it is not known which bank is more reliable: large, fallen under sanctions or small, but dynamically developing.
3. On your site, a bank of this or that / such / such often drops out as the most profitable. Surely you are an employee / project of the bank that stupidly wants to attract more customers.
An interesting point of view, but it is not.
The easiest way to show this: we sort the banks by the amount of the gain, and this is a mathematically calculated number. If you find a mistake with us or you know a better bank at some values ​​of the parameters, then write to us, please, we will be very happy to correct the error and add a more profitable bank!
About our plans. We want to create a service that selects the most profitable financial services for a person. We want to expand the current selection of bank cards (debit and credit) to the selection of deposits, loans, possibly insurance and mortgages. We also think about parsing bank statements from online banks and unloading personal finance accounting services.
We wish all Habr's readers great success in their own projects and undertakings!
Good day!
')
We would like to tell you how the idea came to us, how we started the project and where we are going. We are Alexander Ivanov and Rustem Feizkhanov .
In 2012, we entered the magistracy of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology . The first year we studied at MIT , where we met. One evening Rustem noticed that it was inconvenient to keep track of several bank cards. At the same time, you will not refuse them: a scholarship comes to one, a salary to another, and profitable interests are charged to the third on the third.
Remembering that banks send SMS every time you spend money somewhere, we thought to write an application that parses such SMS and shows balances on all its cards. We went through fellow students from Russia, collected SMS from several banks, wrote down a raw but working application. And they postponed this topic for a while, because I wanted to finish my studies.
Returning to Russia in 2013, we thought, why not throw the application on Google Play? We combed our very raw prototype, added several UI elements. The result was simply a raw prototype, which, however, parsed the SMS of a dozen banks. We threw it on Google Play.
Now I am glad that we then had the idea to throw the application on Google Play. Despite the fact that we received several one-star reviews like “SMS of such a bank is not parsing!”, There were some positive reviews that inspired us. And we decided to work on.
What is the main problem of personal finance and personal accounting services? Most likely, it is necessary to record all expenses every time. A large number of people that we interviewed (practiced, so to speak, Customer Development, which, by the way, was very extensively consecrated at Habré) told us that they kept records of their expenses for 2-3 months, and then it became boring to load each time check.
How can SMS recognition from a bank solve this problem? Imagine that most of your expenses are automatically entered into the desired category and entered into the general list of expenses! It just will remove the most unpleasant part in the maintenance of the budget.
Sounds like a fairy tale, right?
We very quickly met with reality. Firstly, access to SMS-cam is only in Android, and under iOS and Windows Phone it is impossible (well, or only if you dance for a very long time with a tambourine, which the users will not appreciate).
Secondly, there are 850 banks in Russia and each has its own SMS alert templates. It is easy to collect 20, but how to collect templates of at least 100 banks?
In general, the
And it took us several weeks to collect SMS templates from banks. First involved friends. Then friends of friends. Then they began to go to banks independently, arrange cards, carry out several transactions and receive the necessary set of SMS templates. There were so many bank cards that we could easily spread the party into the “fool”.
Then they began to cut the application . And at some point a question came to my mind: if we show the user information on the cards of various banks, why not recommend him a card of the bank most profitable for him? After all, if an application can pull its transactions out of SMS, then it is possible to mathematically calculate the amount of benefits for each of the N banks in Russia and show the best option!
And here we came to the conclusion that they began to show in the application not only card balances, but also a list of the most profitable cards for a person with the calculation of benefits.
But why then be limited only by the application? So we made the site. If in the application information was taken from SMS, then on the website you just need to enter your income and expenses manually (code name of shamanism: “play with sliders”).
A reasonable question: how much can a more profitable card bring?
And here we are shocked. Compared to any
So we decided to refocus from an application that processes SMS from banks to a service that selects the most profitable financial services. In addition to debit cards, we now have a choice of credit cards. We plan to expand the list of selected financial products.
In the spring, we submitted an application to the IIDF and QIWI Universe accelerators. According to personal feelings, the selection in the QIWI Universe was more difficult: in IIDF, besides the online application, there was a Skype interview and several calls, and in the QIWI Universe there were two face-to-face meetings with a presentation. In May, an invitation came to the FRIA internal accelerator, and in June - to the QIWI Universe. We decided to choose a program from QIWI, since QIWI is related to payments and financial issues.
Since mid-July, we have been working in consultation with QIWI and the MSU Business Incubator . It should be noted that we are pleased to work in the QIWI Universe not only because they help us with connections and exits to the right people, but also because it is very interesting to listen to opinion from more experienced guys almost every day.
Finally, I would like to answer a few questions that probably came from an inquisitive reader:
1. Applications that recognize SMS already exist before you / already exist.
At the time we started our work, we found only one application on Google Play that normally processed SMS, but by that time it had not been updated for two years.
After the launch of our application, there appeared both personal finance accounting applications, which added SMS recognition to themselves, and simply applications that are based on SMS recognition. There are several such examples, and these are our competitors. We love to compete with strong rivals, so we wish them every success!
2. On your website and in the application often some small banks are the most profitable. Are they dangerous?
In fact, amounts of money up to 700 thousand rubles are insured on bank cards, so there is no particular risk. And so - it is not known which bank is more reliable: large, fallen under sanctions or small, but dynamically developing.
3. On your site, a bank of this or that / such / such often drops out as the most profitable. Surely you are an employee / project of the bank that stupidly wants to attract more customers.
An interesting point of view, but it is not.
The easiest way to show this: we sort the banks by the amount of the gain, and this is a mathematically calculated number. If you find a mistake with us or you know a better bank at some values ​​of the parameters, then write to us, please, we will be very happy to correct the error and add a more profitable bank!
About our plans. We want to create a service that selects the most profitable financial services for a person. We want to expand the current selection of bank cards (debit and credit) to the selection of deposits, loans, possibly insurance and mortgages. We also think about parsing bank statements from online banks and unloading personal finance accounting services.
We wish all Habr's readers great success in their own projects and undertakings!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/241937/
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