Expensify, Going Public, Touts Payments Super-App as Goal

Expense management software company Expensify has gone public, and Founder David Barrett has said in a letter that he thinks the company will succeed because of its goals to be a “financial social network.”

“Given this broad feature set packed into a single, simple app, we call ourselves a ‘payments super-app’ with the tagline: ‘One app, all free,’” he said in the letter. “But if you can keep a secret, the real long-term vision is so much bigger. We are building the first ‘financial social network,’ devoted to people who are doing the real work of saving this world, every day.”

He said that every business would need the service, as there is a big market for it with over 100 million businesses in the world — but only 0.1% actually using modern expense management tools, with the biggest competitors being Excel, email or a physical, old-school paper email.

According to Barrett’s letter, the company’s idea is to broaden the ways the product can serve customers’ various needs. That includes adding more diversity in how business purchases are made with personal cards, with a structure supporting individual ownership to help handle joint data ownership and safeguard personal data like credit card information.

In addition, there’s new end-to-end encryption with quantum safe tech, which can help protect privacy, and there will be more of a chat-centric design to allow for what Barrett called “some kind of WhatsApp/Venmo lovechild” that can help resolve financial tension and complexities.

Further, the company is looking into unifying features into “a single, universal codebase,” to help everything work on multiple platforms, including iPhones, Android, web and desktop.

Last month, Expensify debuted a Free Plan for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), to give free and unlimited access to the physical and digital Expensify Cards, offering cash back on purchases.

Read more: Expensify Rolls out Cards, Free Services for SMBs

Barrett said at the time that the new plan will help companies get back-office expense management functionality.