Money Dashboard Gets Another $3.7M

Scottish startup Money Dashboard has raised another $3.7 million in funding for its a personal finance app, according to TechCrunch.

The £2.5 million Series A round, which actually closed in November but was only disclosed on Monday (Jan. 26), was led by private equity fund Calculus Capital, with participation from Ariadne Capital, Par Equity and The Scottish Investment Bank. The new funding comes on top of an initial seed round of %pound;2.7 million in November 2013.

Money Dashboard, which was launched in 2010, offers a free app that lets you users monitor their online bank and credit card accounts. The app tracks spending by automatically tagging items in online statements, such as “grocery” or “travel,” so the user gets an aggregated view of where money is going and how income is actually coming in, with the broader aim to help budget more effectively.

Unlike each bank’s own mobile app, Money Dashboard provides a consolidated view of spending across multiple bank accounts and credit cards, supported by a central and somewhat smart dashboard.

The idea of an app that aggregates financial data for better budgeting isn’t unique — San Francisco-based startup Level Money does the same sort of thing. Although it was recently acquired by Capital One, it connects to 250 U.S. financial institutions to track income and expenses, and also makes suggests about what to do with any excess cash. Another angle on the same basic concept is Digit, another SF-based startup that analyzes spending habits and then automatically moves money to a savings account, so the user doesn’t have to pay attention to budgeting.

But what’s different about Money Dashboard is how it makes money: The app doesn’t just help with budgeting, but also pushes various related financial products and offers, encouraging users to switch products in order to save money, and receiving a kickback for doing so.

Money Dashboard also aggregates spending data for its 100,000 users (although the company “guarantee that Money Dashboard will never share any personally identifiable data with a third party without our users express permission”) and sells the anonymized information to market research companies.