Two weeks ago, at Finovate in San Jose, we presented “TD MySpend” on stage with Rizwan Khalfan, the Chief Digital Officer of our partner TD Bank. You can watch a video of that presentation here. But let me tell you why we think that TD MySpend is such an important milestone, not just for Moven but for the FinTech space as a whole.

1. Re-inventing PFM – At Moven, we’ve long talked about the goal of killing the need for budgeting. TD MySpend represents a huge step in that direction. Why? For us, traditional budgeting tools, PFM tools, and similar approaches have two defining characteristics: They are anchored by or oriented around specific “goals”. They are dependent on “rear-view” analysis (i.e. reviewing behaviors that happened in the past by at least a day, most likely a couple of weeks or more before the user actually looks at it).  TD MySpend breaks this model in two major ways. Firstly, it’s not about setting goals, it’s about being aware of habits. Secondly, insight is provided in real time, as soon as you purchase something with a TD debit or credit card. In our opinion this takes traditional PFM/Budgeting from a niche use case (that will benefit and be adopted by a precious few who are willing to work hard to set it up and maintain it) and blows it up into a mass market use case that everyone can easily adopt and benefit from. Early results of TD MySpend are showing just that.

2. Challenging omni-channel – TD MySpend is a mobile app and for the foreseeable future, it only needs to be a mobile app compatible with other mobile devices like watches. Why? Because TD MySpend’s value is about everyday lifestyle and spending. And everyday lifestyle and spending happens mainly when you are out and about. It happens when you swipe your card or tap your phone. Not on a tablet, and not on your work desktop. So, when many in the banking industry still hold tight to the omni-channel commandment of “equal services across all channels”, TD MySpend is blazing a new trail by following customer behaviors. Over the long term, narrowing the channel focus ought to reduce long term costs and increase speed and agility significantly.

3. Leading the way for bank/fintech partnerships – Here are a couple of words that describe the TD MySpend solution approach – cloud based, real time, agile, companion app. How often do these words describe a typical bank/tech vendor solution? We’re working with TD in new ways that test both them and us. Both of us had to define new ways to work so that we could drive rapid innovation at enterprise scale.

We’re very proud to have partnered with TD on MySpend. We couldn’t be more excited by its launch and its gangbuster growth since then. This weekend it was the #2 downloaded app in all of Canada…behind Snapchat but ahead of Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.  What’s more… advertising hasn’t even started.  How about that for a banking app!