Toshl Paves the Way for Financial App Developers

Slovenia isn’t exactly known for its thriving startup scene, especially among San Francisco mobile app developers. But you wouldn’t know it from the splash the Slovenian FinTech app developers have been making in the startup scene since the release of their personal budgeting app Toshl in 2010. With more and more banks and financial institutions going all-in on mobile in 2016, Toshl is quickly adapting their strategy to compete with big-name apps from the likes of Wells Fargo — and showing where financial app developers fit into the picture in an all-mobile banking landscape.

First, a quick overview of Toshl’s core function. Toshl is essentially a personal budgeting app — it works from a combination of hand-recorded and “recurring” expenses from users’ daily lives, generating an attractive and useful visual representation of expenses. Beyond simply serving up the information, the app also provides insights into users’ spending habits, offering advice about how and where to save money.

The differentiating feature of Toshl as compared with the abundance of other offerings from FinTech app developers in the app store is the focus on attractive, non-traditional data layouts. Where most financial apps provide graphs, Toshl provides earth-toned “streams.” The look is unique, and the focus on generating “left to spend” green streams gamify the budgeting experience.

While Toshl CEO Matic Bitenc estimates the company has raised approximately $600,000 in venture capital thus far, he is quick to add that their success implementing a freemium pricing model allows them some degree of autonomy from outside investments.

By far the biggest threat to Toshl — and other financial apps unaffiliated with personal financial services — is the increasing trend towards mobile experience among banks and financial institutions. Why use a third-party app when your bank has a budgeting system built-in, and you don’t have to manually enter data?

While Toshl’s recent upgrade to version 2.0 focussed heavily on the UI and UX elements of the app, Bitenc seems to be planning a power play to bring the banking integrations up to par with other mainstream financial app offerings like Mint.com. Company statements indicate that integrations with major financial services are forthcoming within the year, positioning the mobile app development company’s app as an attractive option to budget-conscious mobile app users.