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Prosper Shutting Down Their Prosper Daily Finance App

Their personal financial management app will be shutdown on August 31 as Prosper decides to focus on their core business

July 28, 2017 By Peter Renton 28 Comments

It was back in September of 2015 when Prosper announced they had purchased the personal finance analytics company called BillGuard for $30 million. At the time this acquisition made sense, it was a way for Prosper to maintain engagement with their customers and prospects beyond just a loan transaction.

BillGuard was relaunched in March of last year as Prosper Daily with a focus on financial well-being. By downloading the app users could keep track of their spending on their credit card and bank accounts, protect their identity and track their credit score.

Alas Prosper Daily will shortly be discontinued. Prosper told me that as of August 31 Prosper Daily will be no more. I reached out to David Kimball, the CEO of Prosper to get his reasoning behind this move.

He told me that the decision was based around focus. While the app was great it was not consistent with the core focus of their business. It was more of an ancillary service and Prosper has become laser focused on their core business this year. Existing users will be notified about a similar app, called Clarity Money, where they can transition and continue to track their finances.

Prosper has retained a few people on the Prosper Daily engineering team and this move will enable them to work on creating a better borrower and investor experience. Improving the web-enabled mobile experience is a key goal for that team now as mobile remains a central part of their development efforts. David didn’t rule out releasing another app at some point in the future but it would be different to the Prosper Daily app.

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Prosper Replaces Finance App BillGuard With Prosper Daily

Prosper focuses on financial well being, not just loans with their new rebranded app.

March 10, 2016 By Ryan Lichtenwald 2 Comments

In September, 2015 Prosper acquired BillGuard, a company that created a mobile personal finance application. The application allowed users to track financial transactions and prevent fraud. Today, Prosper announced the end of the BillGuard brand and introduced a new application with many changes. The new app called Prosper Daily is available today on Apple and Android devices. Peter and I spoke with Itzik Cohen, Chief Business Officer to learn more about the new application and how it fits into Prosper loans.

With the BillGuard acquisition and subsequent rebranding one thing was made clear: Prosper is the first marketplace lender to embrace mobile as a strategy and dedicate significant resources to building it out. What we learned from Itzik was that Prosper Daily is about the broader vision of Prosper. When we asked him about the integration of getting an offer for a Prosper loan within the app he stated that this is not the main point at this time. Itzik said:

Our goal at Prosper is not to give you a loan – it is financial well being.

Now this is not to say that this won’t be a feature at some point, but they are focusing on helping all customers and not just trying to push Prosper loans. In the future it is likely they will analyze Prosper Daily account data and make offers to consumers where they think they can save them money.

Itzik also hinted at additional features and products that could be added to the product. Since the app is currently focused on purchase tracking and verification it’s possible they may enter the purchase finance space. With additional accounts and data to pull from, Prosper may be able to make income and identity verification much easier and more automated. Income verification in the future may be done by looking at direct deposit ACH transactions within accounts. [Read more…]

Prosper Makes its Second Acquisition, a Personal Finance Company Called BillGuard

Prosper has acquired BillGuard, a personal finance analytics company based in Israel, for $30 million

September 24, 2015 By Peter Renton 2 Comments

There is big news out of Prosper this morning. They have made their second acquisition this year (in January they bought a healthcare lender) and it is not what you might expect. They have purchased BillGuard, a personal finance analytics company with offices in Tel Aviv and New York. BillGuard is not a lender; its core product is an app that helps consumers track spending and detect possible fraudulent charges.

This was not the kind of acquisition that I expected out of Prosper so yesterday I chatted with CEO Aaron Vermut to find out more. He was, not surprisingly, very enthusiastic about this deal saying it will give Prosper an edge in many new ways.

What does BillGuard actually do?

Before I get to Aaron’s comments let’s explore BillGuard. Funnily enough, I have been a user of BillGuard’s free service since 2011. One of the cool features that drew me to the product back then was their crowdsourced technology where they would use the crowd to flag any possible fraudulent charges on your credit card bill. When someone detects a fraudulent charge from a merchant this flows through to others who use that same merchant. Over the years, it has been useful to me catching the occasional questionable transaction.

Today, BillGuard offers far more than just this crowdsourced technology. They have a full service personal finance app (highly rated on both the Android and iOS stores) that helps consumers with budgeting, tracking expenses, credit monitoring and even identity theft. It is kind of like Mint and LifeLock rolled into one product. They have 1.3 million registered users and have flagged over $70 million in fraudulent transactions for their users.

How does BillGuard fit with Prosper?