I’m Dan Mullineux founder of wehuhu.co.uk – great article and very much on the same wavelength with our thinking, and as far as I can tell similar to a lot of what LoveMoney is trying to do.

You said you are not that security conscious but at least you are security aware. It is amazing how many people are really just not aware of the basics of online security. Actually it’s not that amazing, it’s quite understandable given the complexity of the problem.

I think one of the biggest differences between our approach and LoveMoney (and probably moneydashboard) is around the security model.

You mention trusted machines..

“Trusted machines – link my laptop or desktop to the website, meaning I only have to jump through a hoop once”

The other services use a third party called Yodlee to get their bank data.

The benefit of this is that you don’t have to jump through any hoops

The down side is that you have to hand over all the answers to all of your bank security questions which are then stored on central servers under the control of Yodlee – so in effect your ‘Trusted machines’ are anonymous servers out in the internet .

Yodlee then actually logs in to your bank’s web site for you and processes the web pages to gather balance and transaction data

Whether this is as insecure as it appears for an individual is not a simple matter, but it does require that you put a lot of trust in Yodlee. Yodlee do make as many promises as you would expect, that they are as secure as the banks themselves, but that’s still a lot of trust.

We just don’t feel comfortable with giving away all our credentials to a third party company, and so have taken the trusted machine approach, where you still have to log into your bank yourself. Weve made things a bit easier with a firefox plugin, but it’s one more hoop to jump through.

Dan.

I will be reviewing them and starting to use one of them soon. There will be a full review post on this blog so stay tuned! I will also no doubt have many requests and suggestions

We’ve had a fair few issues with card readers in the process of building our online banking service. We recently fixed some of the issues as we announced in our blog recently: http://bit.ly/9xiAxc

It would be great to get your opinion on our online banking service and ability to use pin sentry, as you’re clearly someone who gets the whole value of a service like this.

In terms of the UK market – there are a few players as you mention – but thought I’d just add a few comments to update your information:

lovemoney.com – UK only – we’re a new UK company launched in April 2009, with online banking launching in December last year. We’re still in early days – but are receiving some great feedback and improving our service with releases every two weeks – as you can see from our regularly updated blog. http://bit.ly/9xiAxc

moneydashboard – still in BETA – with no known launch date – agree with your summation

kublax – the oldest of the bunch – but face closure due to lack of funding – may be being rescued at the last minute – but we are still to see. http://tcrn.ch/dra2CX

Wehuhu – a small player where you can upload your info or add info – but no way to automate banking feeds – but its still early days.