Sticking to a budget can be a challenge no matter how big or small your income is. While Mint.com gives you access into where your money is going, it doesn’t incentivize or motivate you to stick to a budget. Enter Spenz, a startup launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today, is launching a proactive way for a younger generation to track where they spend all of their money and provides incentives and rewards for users to budget.
People can input their expenses via mobile and web apps. The idea behind a mobile app is to allow users to input something they’ve spent money on quickly and on the fly. It aims to track both your big purchases and spending (i.e. car payments and rent) and discretionary spending (i.e. coffee at Starbucks, lunch). Spenz will categorize spending into categories like activities, entertainment, food etc.
Every input that is entered in Spenz will allow users to unlock rewards and special deals. You can earn tokens from your interactions and savings to cash in on these deals.
To make money, Spenz will charge merchants and brand to access user data on where spending is taking place. Don’t worry, all data is anonymous, and partners will have access to aggregated customers’ spending data including whether they are capturing the maximum amount of their customers’ total spend, in their given category.
The Spenz platform will also allow partners to push targeted offers to groups of users based on these insights. Partners will also have access to publish rewards and offers to Spenz users. Essentially Spenz will allow its partners to answer the question: “how much of my customer’s monthly spending am I getting compared to my competition”.
Here’s their presentation.