Editor’s note: Since this interview Cashoff seems to have grown significantly (1 April, 2017).
The story of CASHOFF dates back to years 2010-2011 when young specialists Dmitry Gorkov and Mikhail Medvedev of a big Russian company dealing with e-banking services first met. Having implemented more than 50 successful individual e-banking projects, we started thinking of a standalone resource which could combine all the electronic accounts and provide more opportunities for personal financial management.
So the idea of CASHOFF was born. This is an automatic cloud service which can collect data from all the banks a certain person deals with. We expected it to be more than just a cash flow aggregator. We thought of a personal financial consultant who could distribute incomes reasonably and improve people’s economic conditions. That was especially urgent considering the fact that people in Russia kept their money distributed to accounts, electronic cash-boxes, in various banks and payment systems. It made the total control of receipts and expenditures too complicated. We expected CASHOFF to present an innovative technology for keeping control of personal budget by aggregating financial data from various sources, minimising manual data entry and independent analysis, due to integration with internet banks and electronic cash-boxes.
In 2012 the target audience included over 27% AEAC (adult economically active citizens, i.e. 13.5 million people) planning their budget and using internet banks, and this number was constantly increasing. So the demand for serious means of unified financial control was reasonable.
The project implementation took about two years, in August 2012 we started developing its technical part. We used all the knowledge and experience gained during the development of complex banking systems, to make the resource easy, safe and useful. The process of CASHOFF development was also guided by the respective experience in other countries where similar projects had already involved millions of people.
On May 13, 2013 CASHOFF was launched. This is an easy home bookkeeping system which allows individual e-banking users to keep total control of their personal finances. You don’t have to be an economist to use it anytime you need.
At the current moment, CASHOFF offers the following: a total review of users’ data from various sources; dealing with cash boxes; automatic distribution of transactions by categories and merchants; diagram of receipts and expenditures distribution by categories, merchants and days; import of financial data from different banks.
CASHOFF is a perfect title for a service dealing with the internalisation of monetary transactions. The system really helps to save money by searching optimal ways of planning budget. Moreover, we are going to develop a partner network, to implement interesting events, special propositions and bonus programs.