Have you ever wondered why being financially responsible can be so difficult? Maybe it’s because most money management tools are too complicated and overwhelming for the average user.
Penny, a new personal finance app, is fixing this by giving users personalized financial advice via a simple chat interface.
As soon as you open the app for the first time, Penny starts talking to you, almost as if you were just texting your banker. Even the traditionally tedious process of linking your bank account to a new app is done by just chatting with Penny.
After your account is tied to the app, you can talk to Penny and ask her to do thing like show how much you spent on food in October, or show you a graph of your income vs. spending over the past two months.
Penny also will push out information to you, doing things like reminding users how much they spent this week on food, etc.
One downside with Penny is that users can’t just type requests. Instead, the app gives you prewritten prompts to send, like “How’s October going,” or “My Account Activity”.
However, the company explained that offering prewritten responses result in much less friction for users. Basically, some younger users may not know what questions to ask about their finances, and would just not use Penny if they had to ask their own questions.
That being said, the company eventually hopes to incorporate natural language processing so users can craft their own prompts. However, even without custom messages, Penny already offers a hundred different potential conversations, with multiple options for progressing through each one.
For a closer look at Penny, check out our TC App Review above, or download Penny from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.