On Thursday, 7 July 2022, Pocketbook, one of Australia’s original budgeting apps, announced they were shutting down. On 5 August 2022, all accounts will be closed, and users will no longer be able to access their data. At Frollo, we’ve always admired Pocketbook’s role in making budgeting apps mainstream. They were early and successful and still have a fantastic and dedicated group of users. It’s sad to see an ‘OG’ of the Australian money management apps go, but we hope to help Pocketbook’s users who are looking for an alternative.
That’s because we’re on a mission to help people feel good about money. Whether that’s by helping them reduce debt, increase savings or just get a better deal on their finances.
If you’re looking for a comparison of all money management apps in Australia, Mozo and Savings.com.au have done a great job listing them. In this article, we’ll focus on Pocketbook and Frollo and what you can expect if you make the switch.
This is the Frollo money management app
The easiest way to turn around your finances
- Link your accounts to see all your finances in one place;
- We’ll categorise your transactions and provide you with spend graphs and smart insights (like “You have insufficient funds to cover your upcoming bills” or “Your grocery spend is up by 20% this month”);
- Whether you’re saving for a goal, paying down debt or just trying to get on top of your finances, the app has a range of tools to help you achieve your goals. Our budgeting tool will help you stay on track, and our goals feature automatically tracks your progress as you save for a holiday, deposit or a rainy day.
How does Frollo compare to Pocketbook?
Great question! We put together a comparison chart. It’s by no means complete, but it covers the big-ticket items:
What’s the difference between Open Banking and screen scraping?
You might not have heard of Open Banking before, but we think it’s a game changer.
For years budgeting apps have had to ask users to share their account credentials, so they could log in to their internet banking and read the transaction history (this is called screen scraping), which they could then import into the app.
It’s long been the only way to link accounts to a budgeting app, and Frollo still uses it for some providers. But since 1 July 2020, we’re also using Open Banking. A government-regulated, secure way for consumers to share their data without passwords.
- With Open Banking, you don’t have to share your banking password;
- With Open Banking, transactions are updated in a few seconds, multiple times per day;
- With Open Banking, the business you share your data with is accredited by the ACCC to comply with strict rules around privacy and security.
We always protect your privacy, whether you share your data via Open Banking or screen scraping. And we only use your data to make the app work for you. We don’t share it with anyone, and when you tell us to delete your account, we delete all of your data.
Some banks don’t support joint accounts in Open Banking yet. They will, by the end of this year. You can still use screen scraping for those banks in the meantime.
(If you can’t find your joint account, your bank probably doesn’t support it yet. Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to tell if they do.)
Why is the Frollo app free and how does Frollo make money?
First of all, we’re a purpose-driven fintech. As mentioned, we’re on a mission to help people feel good about money. Whether that’s by helping them reduce debt, increase savings or just get a better deal on their finances.
We do this primarily by building financial wellbeing technology (like budgeting and responsible lending tools) and selling this to banks, fintechs and lenders. We work with clients like Virgin Money Australia, Canstar and Beyond Bank.
Our app is free, and we don’t monetise it. We don’t sell the data, charge a subscription fee or make money from referrals.
But the Frollo app is very important to us as a business, because:
- It enables us to directly help Australians improve their financial well-being. It’s free, accessible and impactful. We know that users reduce their debt and increase their savings when they use our app, and that’s amazing! For example, on average new Frollo users:
- Reduce personal loan debt by 23% in the first 6 months
- Increase their savings by 11% in the first 3 months
- The technology we use in the app is the same technology that we sell to our clients. So our app users provide us with valuable feedback on how to make our products better and more impactful. The app is also a great place to test new features.
- Potential clients can download our app and experience some of the features they can buy. That certainly beats a Powerpoint deck!
