We can all agree Credit Karma, Chase Mobile, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and PayPal aren’t leaving the Top Ten on App Annie anytime soon.
But ratings and rankings aren’t everything — there’s also the cool factor. How easy is the app to use? Does it makes us feel good (even though we’re dealing with money?)
For our “best apps” below, we spoke to some of fintech’s finest, as you can see, before we made our selections. Here’s what they had to say.
Bradley Leimer, head of fintech innovation at Santander US:.
I’m a big fan of Sweep and Digit on the savings side, as well as updates from Moven and Level on the spending, goals and PFM side. Circle for money movement and Bitcoin, use Credit Karma a lot, as well as Penny, Qapital. On the real estate side, I use Zillow a lot, and also Open Listings. I prefer USAA over any other FI app. I also like Acorn, FutureAdvisor on the investment side.”
Sweep was founded in 2014, and acquired by the Max Levchin-led lending startup Affirm in April. Moven is the personal money manager that provides users with real-time feedback on each. Ghela Boskovich, director of global strategic business development & marketing at Zafin, as well as organizer of FemTech Leaders, added these to the mix:
[I’m] loving Azimo — also exploring Tandem, Mondo (great design), and Atom. Splitting time between two countries, so wire transfer is crucial, hence Azimo. I also like Qapital for no-brainer savings, it’s a really great approach to encouraging saving and unconsciously modifying customer behavior.
Azimo is for sending money internationally. Tandem and Mondo are bank account replacements, called challenger banks in the U.K. and (sometimes) neobanks in the U.S.
Fazir Jameer Ali, head of digital banking strategy & innovation for Key Bank, expressed love for Robinhood and Uber, as well as mobile wallets Square Cash and Venmo. He even confessed to admiring the merchant app Starbucks, the most important mobile payments app of them all.
Scarlett Sieber, senior vice president of global business development for new digital businesses at BBVA, mentioned Sweep and Dwolla as playing a role in her financial life.
You can find these four fintecherati on Twitter: @leimer, @ghelaboskovich, @thatdudef, @scarlettsieber
Taking into account the feedback we received, as well as Bank Innovation‘s own expertise, our choices for the five Best Apps follow.