Purchase by Politics!

2012 is a big election year, and we at Billeo thought it would be interesting to see if this whole “Red State, Blue State” distinction means anything when it comes to bill paying and shopping.  What did we find?  See our “Purchase by Politics” infographic below to see our findings using the bill pay and shopping purchase data from our 1.5 million users.  We looked at how much on average users spent on online bill pay and shopping purchases, which cities had the highest average bill pay and shopping annual spend, and what red and blue state users were shopping for.

Key findings include that online bill payment make up the majority, 80%, of online spending for users in both the blue and red state.  And, while users in both red and blue states spend similar amounts on paying bills, there are some interesting differences in how each state shops.   For example,  folks in the red states highest category annual spend is in Home Improvement, which is 39% more than blue state folk.  On the other hand, Blue state folks spend the most on Travel and Vacations, 39% more than the Red State folk.

Click on our “Purchase by Politics” Infographic below to check out all the data.

 

Billeo’s ShopSmart™ App nominated for a 2012 American Business Award!

Billeo’s ShopSmart™ App was just named as a finalist in the Best Shopping Apps category for the 2012 American Business Awards.  We are excited to be nominated!  If we win, this will be our third Stevie, and our first for the ShopSmart App.  The winner will be announced in September at the American Business Award’s ceremony in San Francisco.  Read more about it in our Press Release.

Join Billeo at FinovateSpring 2011

Billeo has been selected to present at FinovateSpring 2011.  Murali Subbarao, our CEO, will demo a new, innovative shopping product at Finovate. This is Billeo’s fourth visit to Finovate, a unique conference series that showcases financial and banking technology innovation.  FinovateSpring 2011 will be held in San Francisco on 10 and 11 May 2011.

Are you interested in seeing our live demo? Get 10% off Finovate tickets using Billeo’s special promo code, “Billeo10”.  Tickets available at FinovateSpring 2011 tickets.

The Billeo Add-on For Firefox Loyalists

Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no internet access for the last decade or so you’ve likely tried or at least heard about Mozilla Firefox. If you still view Firefox as new or foreign then you may also find yourself regularly using a term like, “the internets’; or, perhaps you’re still waiting for your AOL floppy disc to come in the mail so you can dial-up to the “World Wide Web”.

…Not that there is anything wrong with that.

For the rest you, the ones present and actively participating in the 21st century, you know Firefox is a great alternative browser to the out-of-the-box options provided by Microsoft and Apple. From my experience, Firefox offers you fast and reliable performance, more features, and way better personalization.

Mozilla’s biggest claim to fame (and what sets them apart from other alternative options) is their massive selection of add-ons and extensions. I use them to customize and personalize my browser and speed up my performance and efficiency online.

Here at Billeo, it was a no-brainer to build our own add-on for devout Firefox-ists such as ourselves. In designing our offering for Firefox, we wanted to create an add-on that has all the features of the regular Billeo, but in a more compact and sleek package. The Billeo add-on, which by the way, is referred to on Mozilla’s site as Offer Assistant, is designed to run exclusively within the Firefox browser environment. It will not install to Internet Explorer and will not auto-run in your system tray at start-up.

After installation, new Billeo users will find the add-on presented as a space-saving single button in Firefox’s Navigation Bar and have only Offer Assistant (our newest feature) enabled at the outset.

Existing Billeo users who install the Firefox add-on and sign in with their existing Billeo username will retain all the features and settings they are accustomed to using.

For all users, adding features and/or customizing the look and feel of the add-on are as easy as checking a box or two in the Settings Menu.

I personally think the default single button view just looks awesome. It’s almost as if the Billeo add-on is engrained into the default layout of the browser. Plus, it can save a whole row of much needed browsing space. I’m sure that fellow netbook and laptop users will agree that maximizing browser real estate is crucial.

If you are a fan of Firefox and don’t mind having Billeo absent from Internet Explorer, try out our Firefox add-on and let us know what you think.

Click here to get the add-on: Offer Assistant by Billeo 2.1.0.5

Have Your Cake and Eat it Too This Valentine’s Day. Mmmm Cake…

Ah, Valentine’s Day. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…  I’m actually kind of indifferent to the holiday, but for the sake of this blog post I’ll side with the lovers.

The phrase “Happy Valentine’s Day” has become so synonymous with retail spending over the years that some are simply not buying the idea (or a box of chocolates) anymore. The anti-Valentine’s Day activists say it’s a “pointless made-up holiday” or they proclaim, “I don’t need one day out of the year to remind me to tell or show someone I love them”.

The “Negative Nancies” make some fair points, but what would they have you do otherwise: Decline to buy the person you love some nice flowers or a small gift?  How about you just stay at home with your significant other and eat a TV dinner like any other night? Nothing says you care like a TV dinner.

No. You aren’t going to do that, because then you’d be a jerk. And no one likes a jerk. Except for maybe this jerk. He’s cool.

Convinced yet? I thought so… So now that you have decided to shell out the cash, you need to decide what to get your Hunny Bunny (< cough> Mom<cough>). However, you don’t want to spend too much. You know, because of the economy or something.

Another hurdle in buying the perfect gift is actually making the effort to get in your car and drive to the mall. For me, the mall is out of the question for a few reasons. First off, I’m a pretty lazy person. Secondly, there are a lot of people at the mall including kids. Just saying. Lastly and probably my strongest reason, this is the 21^st century and shopping online is awesome. It’s convenient, fast, and more times than not, I can get discounts and free shipping.

Lets recap: Participating in V-Day? Check.  Shopping Online? Check. Finding a great gift for your soul mate (er, Mom) at a discounted price? Uhm…

Don’t fret. Billeo has you covered. Billeo’s free Offer Assistant brings the savings to YOU, while you shop online! Take a look at some of these great offers I’ve complied for you with the help of Offer Assistant.

Gift Idea	Loyalty Program	Merchant Name	Offer Description
Chocolate	Bank of America	Ghirardelli	Double Cash Back! Earn 16% for a limited time!
Flowers	Bank of America	FTD	Double Cash Back! Earn 30% for a limited time!
Flowers	Visa	Proflowers	Save 15% and get a FREE vase
Flowers	Bing	1-800-Flowers	20% cashback
Jewelry	Visa	Zales	Save $50 on purchases of $300 or more
Jewelry	American Express	Diamond.com	Receive 20% off and free ground shipping
Jewelry	Bing	Things Remembered	20% cashback
Perfume / Cologne	Bank of America	Fragrance Net	Double Cash Back! Earn 16% for a limited time!
Perfume / Cologne	Bing	Fragrance Net	10% cashback + Free Shipping
Perfume / Cologne	Merchant Direct	Perfume.com	Free Shipping on orders of $59 or more
Hotel	Visa	Starwood Hotels	Stay one night & the next is 50% off
Hotel	Merchant Direct	Orbitz	WINTER HOTEL BLOWOUT: SAVE up to 50%!
Gift Baskets / Cookies	Merchant Direct	Mrs. Fields	10% Off All Products
Gift Baskets / Bakery	American Express	Mrs. Beasley’s	Receive 15% off your online purchase

These are just a few of the offers waiting for you. Offer Assistant now boasts over 2000 offers from over 1500 merchants!

If you already have Billeo, all you need to do is start shopping by searching for the product you want in Google, Yahoo, or Bing. If you don’t have Billeo yet, just download the free browser app to gain access to the savings.

Also, since Offer Assistant may display up to three unique offers per merchant, don’t forget to configure the new Loyalty Program Selector to have Billeo display the offers you want to see. Take my case for example. Since my bank is Bank of America and I have a Visa credit card, I configured my Offer Assistant to display BofA and Visa offers first. Now I am guaranteed not to miss a great deal that I can use!

There it is: That’s my pitch. Legitimate holiday or not, I hope you and your mom (just admit it already!) have a great Valentine’s Day.

Either way, check out Offer Assistant. Whether you’re buying gifts for others or shopping for your own stuff, it can help save you money. Even in the best of economic times that’s a pretty good thing.

Let us know what you bought and how much money you saved on Facebook, Twitter, or email us at feedback@billeo.com.

Now Batting…

Our long time users know Billeo has always offered a “Murderers Row” of three big hitting features. With a recent addition to the lineup card, Billeo now consists of four power hitters: (listed not necessarily in order of power) Bill Pay Assistant, Shopping Assistant, Password Assistant, and Offer Assistant.

If you are new to Billeo you may be asking, “So who’s the new guy in the lineup?”

Well, I’m glad you asked. Introducing…

(wait for it)…

Offer Assistant!

The OA is a beast of a feature on performance enhancers. Call it OA-Rod, if you will (you don’t have to). Though in reality, even without enhancers, the Offer Assistant truly is a game changer.

An online shopper’s dream, Offer Assistant brings offers, discounts, and rewards to you via your favorite search provider. Unveiled and demoed at Finovate in late September, it garnered some rave reviews by industry professionals and customers alike.

Using the Offer Assistant is as simple as searching for an item or store online. Your search results are then tagged with the Billeo icon indicating that a discount or several discounts are available for that item.

The offer tag gives you the ability to evaluate and choose discounts and rewards from banks, financial institutions and online merchants in one place within the main, unsponsored search results of the three most popular search engines: Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Furthermore, if a coupon code or a specific payment card has to be used on the checkout page, the Offer Assistant will remember to prompt you during checkout, and assist in filling the coupon code.

Not to take anything away from the solid five year veterans in the Billeo lineup, but Offer Assistant is designed to help you find discounts and rewards easily when shopping online from over 360 retailers including Target, Best Buy, and Nike. Beyond the offers we find, the Offer Assistant service also presents discounts and rewards available to you as a Visa, American Express, Bank of America, Chase or UPside prepaid card member. I don’t’ know about you, but OA-Rod has my vote for Rookie of the Year and League MVP.

With a name like Billeo (personally, I like “Transacteo”, but it hasn’t quite caught on yet with management), it’s kind of ironic that half the features of the browser app are directly related to helping you shop online. “Transacteo” may never fly, but really, that’s what we do: We help you transact online.

Whether you’re buying a ticket to the game or paying a parking ticket you got at the yard, I think we can all agree that transacting online is the way to go. It’s convenient, discreet, and in most cases, it’s fun.

Why not make your online experience even easier and more rewarding? Step up to the plate and try out Billeo’s newly expanded suite of assistants!

Let us know what you think: feedback@corp.billeo.com

Browser Saved Passwords Are Soooo Last Week

We’ve all been there: It’s 11pm and you’ve just remembered you need to
pay a bill online.  Tired and frustrated, you open up the laptop
and fire up a browser. You find the company’s website in your bookmarks
and go to their login page and…

Why didn’t your login data auto-populate for you? Did you accidentally
delete them when clearing your private data last week?

Ugh…

After rustling through a stack of old mail, you find the paper bill
with your account ID – you’re halfway there.  Now you have to try
to use the old noggin to remember the password. After your third
attempt at an impossible 8 digit minimum letters and numbers with a
special character required password, you are locked out of the website.
The notification says, “Your account has been locked due to 3 failed
login attempts, please click this link or call this number to
reset/unlock”.

You are really fuming now. The inconvenience of calling a CS
Representative is out of the question (you’ve been there before and
really don’t feel like kicking the dog again), so you go through the
mundane, thoroughly invasive task of resetting your password.

You click the link and enter your email address. You go to your email
and click the reset password link. At long last, you are able to reset
your password, but not before entering in the last four digits of your
social security number, correctly answering a ‘what is your mother’s
maiden name?’ type question, and naming all the state capitols in
reverse alphabetical order while rubbing your stomach and patting your
head.

Finally! You’ve done it! You’re the man!

It’s 12 o’clock…

Ok, so maybe I exaggerated a little bit. Remembering website logins
isn’t always this time consuming and annoying. Also, I don’t advocate
dog kicking.

On the other hand, this scenario could be worse. What would happen if
you were forced to call a CS Rep. and they were unavailable or you
couldn’t successfully answer your security question? More times than
not, a late payment would happen.

Billeo has the solution for you with our Passwords feature. It’s very
simple yet intuitive. You can easily save a password and on your next
visit to the site it will automatically fill in. If you need to
view/edit/delete your passwords, you can easily do so by clicking a
button.  You can save multiple passwords for a single domain and
assign them unique nicknames for easy access. If a secure site has a
username on one page and a password on another, Billeo will save and
populate both without a hitch. Billeo’s Password Manager will even give
you the option to automatically submit your filled password directly
into the website so you will be logged right in.

Of course, this feature means nothing without security. Billeo encrypts
all of your stored passwords in a file that is located on your local
hard drive. ‘The Vault’ as we like to call it, is encrypted using
industry standard 128 Bit AES encryption. This data is yours and Billeo
does not have access to it.

Additionally, you can heighten the security of your passwords by
enabling or disabling some key toolbar settings. Personally, I disable
the automatic sign in feature for my toolbar so I know that I will have
to log in access my information. I also backup my Vault on a USB thumb
drive so I have a copy of my stored passwords in case of a hard drive
crash or if my laptop is lost or stolen. If you have multiple computers and would like to securely sync your passwords between two or
more computers/toolbars, I would recommend trying Dropbox.

I hope you try out our Password Manager feature after reading this
blog. If you already have Billeo, hopefully you learned something new.
As always, feel free to email us at support@billeo.com for any
questions or assistance on using this great feature.

Welcome!

Hello everyone,

Welcome to our new blog. We have a couple of posts up here already and we’re just getting started! Our goal is to regularly share valuable news and tips that affect your finances. We also want to let you in on some of the exciting things that are happening here at Billeo and maybe even provide an insider’s view of the challenges inherent in making a small company go in today’s world.

From the start we’ve been committed to developing a product that helps to make shopping and paying bills online faster, easier and more rewarding for you. We designed our toolbar to give you more control over your online transactions. The world of ecommerce changes and evolves constantly and we’re working hard to not just keep up, but, put Billeo users out in front of that evolution with an application that works better, smarter, and faster. It is no mean feat, however, and we’ve experienced plenty of failures to go along with our successes.

Recently we’ve received some awards that show we’re on the right track. This year we were awarded the 2009 SIIA CODiE Award for “Best eCommerce Solution” and were named a Webby Award Nominee for Best Banking/ Bill Paying Website. Webby Honorees, Nominees and Winners truly represent the best of the Web, and we are honored to be among those awarded.
 
Most recently, Billeo was named “Best eCommerce Site” by the American Business Awards; one of the business world’s most coveted awards. The awards ceremony was held in New York and Robin O’Connell, Billeo’s Vice President of Business Development and my fellow blogger, was in attendance.

Billeo is proud to be honored for its achievements as we strive everyday to bring you the most innovative and useful shopping and bill payment tool on the web.

And(!) we’re excited to get this blog up and going and and to leverage this new channel of communication to share ideas and touch base with all of our Billeo users. We hope you’ll read our posts, but more than that, we hope you’ll participate. Don’t hesitate to post your comments of agreement or dissent. Let’s get the conversation started!

Write us at feedback@billeo.com and let us know if there are specific topics you’d like to read about in this blog – we’d love to hear from you.  And thank you for your continued support.  

Best,
Murali Subbarao
Founder/CEO, Billeo, Inc.

Billeo with a side of Dropbox

One of the challenges we face at Billeo is properly supporting consumers who use our toolbar on multiple computers.

‘How to access passwords from multiple computers and keep them synced up?’

Let’s take my situation as an example. I regularly use my one Billeo account on three separate computers (office pc, home pc, and Macbook). It is easy enough for me to use a flash drive or online storage solution, a la Mozy, Carbonite, or IDrive, to back up my office pc to my home pc or my Macbook.

The problem is changes I make to Billeo on one computer do not carry over to the other two. If I’m using multiple computers regularly their respective Billeo vaults grow separately. While each computer will have the Billeo stored logins for, say, T-Mobile, Amazon, and Facebook, one or two of the three (but not all!) may have my PayPal or Netflix or Zappos.

When you have two or more computers, all with Billeo installed, all with unique logins stored, how do you decide which vault is your primary? How do you keep Billeo synced across all your computers?

An application called Dropbox may have the solution. With a Dropbox account, files I save in a specific folder on one computer are instantly updated and available in corresponding folders on the other computers I use.

This is an imminently useful tool and Dropbox knows it. Like other companies in their niche, they’re betting the free accounts (2GB) they offer will hook consumers who will eventually pony up for more space. It’s a good bet.

A Billeo vault at less than 100KB is only a drop in the 2GB bucket…yet, I can already feel the urge to upgrade my Dropbox account.

In the meantime, straight from the Billeo Cookbook, here is our recipe for Billeo with a side of Dropbox.

1. Download Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com/) onto one of your computers
2. Install it (thereby creating a Dropbox folder on your pc/Mac) and sign up for a free 2GB Dropbox account
3. Backup your Billeo vault to the new Dropbox folder (Click here for help backing up your vault)
4. Sign out of Billeo
5. Click Sign In on the Billeo toolbar to bring up the Sign In box
6. Click Options in the Sign In box and then the button with the ellipses (…)
7. Point to your saved Vault within the Dropbox and sign in

Now any new login data should save to the Vault you stored in the Dropbox.

For the second computer:

1. Download and install Dropbox to the second computer
2. Sign in to the Dropbox account you created earlier–it should immediately sync your saved data from your first computer to this one
3. Click Sign In on the Billeo toolbar to bring up the Sign In box
4. Click Options and then the ellipses again
5. Within your Dropbox folder you should see your saved Vault from the first computer. Point to it and Sign In.

You should have all the saved data from the first Vault. Any new logins  you record will save to the Vault within Dropbox, which will automatically sync to the folder on the first computer. When you sign back in to Billeo on the first computer any changes made while on the second computer should be reflected in your Vault.

One lesson I learned early on: Do Not Try to save logins to one Billeo account from two or more locations simultaneously (i.e. don’t let someone at another location use your Billeo account while you are using it). It just won’t work effectively.

Also, when you sit down at your computer, sign out then back into Billeo to ensure yourself you are accessing the most recent data.

A number of Billeo users have already begun syncing their vaults through Dropbox and all the feedback has been positive. If you’ve been using Billeo on more than one computer you really must give this recipe a try.

If you encounter any roadblocks in setting up Dropbox, or, if you’re just not comfortable implementing these steps on your own, feel free to reach out to me or one of my colleagues in Billeo Support (support@billeo.com /866-539-0782).

Card-funded Bill Pay: The Last Great Divide

Can’t we all just get along?

One of the most pervasive influences in bill payments today you will not see in print in American Banker or Payments News. Analysts don’t mention it in their comprehensive analyses and forecasts of the market. And bankers will most likely get fidgety and cold sweats when discussing the subject.

But anyone at a bill pay service provider or at a bank or issuer that has worked on bill pay knows what I am talking about.

It’s the dysfunctional relationship between the issuing side of the bank and the retail side of the bank when it comes to bill pay.

The credit and debit card issuer want their cardholders to pay their bills with their cards to drive interchange revenues, and the retail side of the bank wants their customers to pay through their traditional online banking bill pay. The problem? They are the same customers, paying the same bills but you can’t make an interchange generating card-based bill payment at your bank’s web site.

There, I said it… there’s no solution in market today that provides for both what the card issuer wants and what the online banking bill pay people want. And it’s not for a lack of trying. Two companies offer a work around solution here – Billeo and Yodlee. I won’t go into the details or sales pitch, and I’ll be the first to admit that neither solution is the perfect solution.

The perfect solution – that elusive, silver bullet solution seems so simple. Why can’t there be just a drop down list next to any biller from the bill pay payee list where the user can choose how they want to make the payment? Credit card debit card or ACH? The answer is that the Biller won’t accept a credit or debit card payment this way. Why would they – with ACH, the Biller accepts online banking bill pay payments for pennies and a card bill payment would cost dollars. And herein lies the rub – banks want one thing and the billers want another, and never the two shall meet.

So the dysfunction festers and the tension continues between Biller Direct bill pay and traditional online banking bill pay.

So who pays? The consumer. The consumer is left to navigate the disjointed offerings of the bank. The issuer marketing to the consumer that they should pay their bills with a card and the retail side marketing to pay through online banking bill pay. The consumer does both, of course, because each path provides a different end benefit. Traditional online banking bill pay allows for a seamless one-stop-shop user experience to pay any bill, but the payment can take several days to process. Whereas, paying a bill directly at the biller’s site is instantaneous but the consumer must go to multiple sites.

But some day, somehow that tension will break, because the consumer will demand it.