After a year, the company stopped paying the gas and electrical companies but didn't stop taking money from the students. The company then folded, closing their offices. My friends were left with bailiffs and debt collectors chasing them for the unpaid gas and electricity bills (about £2500 iirc) which they had to pay.
I would never recommend anyone insert middlemen in financial transactions if at all possible.
In terms of your privacy concerns, while we've worked really hard to make our service secure and leverage trusted security storage providers, we know there'll still be some people who are not ok with sharing their bill account credentials. This is why we are very excited to be developing the YSplit card. You can essentially get a card and use it to split & pay the bills without handing over any account details. There'll be some limitations, most notably not seeing all your bill data in one place, but the splitting feature will work the same.
You (and your providers) will not only know my spending but who I share a house/utilities/services with. And personally I place quite a high value on that data (as do others who trade it)
I've seen quite a few companies that operate in this financial intermediary space and start off with strong privacy ideals, and then when they're getting traction and are raising a Series A/B can't resist adding a cool $5-10M ARR with near zero marginal cost by selling out.
Additionally, the fact that it's a "VC-backed startup" is irrelevant. Any company with any structure could be doing this.
Which would make the service too expensive for me.
I don't use Facebook for the same reason.
But as I mentioned in the top level comment, this is a concern for me because I'm probably more privacy-conscious then an average user so I might not be exactly the type of user they're building for.
My previous 2 apartments I lived in required paying rent by paper check, delivered to their office, which was very annoying. They didn't take any forms of electronic payment, and mailing a check is a pain for millenials like me who don't usually stock envelopes or stamps. However, they also didn't take checks written by anyone other than the leasee, so that could be something that might need to be negotiated.
I would drop that whole page, honestly. It’s written in a pretty technical way and didn’t make me feel any safer, and on top of that made me feel like you all were deflecting from the bigger and more immediate threat, data selling.
Good for them if they find people paying for their service but same as you, I don't see how this can't be solved with a spreadsheet.
I find services like these bothersome for a different reason. A major selling point is catering to people that have difficulty getting the cash together to front a utility bill or rent. For every app that exploits people's inability to manage their finances I wish we'd see an app that teaches financial literacy and responsibility.
I agree with you 100%. I'm not sure how feasible it is to build a business around it, though, since monetization techniques are likely to turn people off or harm the product. Bogleheads is an awesome existing resource, in case anyone's interested
The convenience that you provide is not sufficient for me to give you not only access to a significant part of my financial information but nearly unrestricted access to my money. In addition to that, not only do you have access to it but any of the services that you might use. And I probably don't trust them either.
Furthermore, I'm also deeply skeptical of services that require you to top up an account and then use that balance. This is mainly because of the way these types of accounts are (ab)used in South East Asia. (eg. if you top up that account and use that balance to buy something, you wont ever be able to get a refund in money, it'll only ever be refunded to that account) Besides the fact that in many cases you have limited access to your own money.
With that said, given that I'm probably a bit more privacy conscious than an average user given I'm in tech I'm probably not your target market so my feedback might be nearly irrelevant.
Btw when I shared a house, I had an Excel sheet where I put the bills and rent as they came in. A few days before rent was due I'd remind everyone that the sheet has been updated and when everyone paid their share I'd pay all the bills. I definitely understand how your solution could be a selling point if you live with people you don't trust or are unreliable.