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Accounting Easy for All Money Forward, Inc. IP

Website: Money Forward, Inc.(627KB)
Category: IT

Money Forward provides a top-ranked personal financial management app for individuals and a cloud-based platform for businesses

Money Forward, Inc. is a fast-growing Tokyo fintech startup that simplifies accounting for both individuals and companies. Downloaded more than 4.5 million times, the Money Forward personal smartphone app has been selected as a Google Play Best App for three years running, while its MF Cloud platform supports more than 500,000 businesses.

“Money is important to everyone, but some people don’t have anyone to approach for help with financial matters,” says Money Forward co-founder and CEO Yosuke Tsuji. This thought led him to develop the Money Forward personal financial management (PFM) service in 2012, followed by the MF Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for businesses in 2013.

Personal & Business Solutions on a Massive Scale

The Money Forward app is freemium PFM software that allows users to easily manage both their daily expenses and assets. At the heart of this app lies one of the company’s core technologies: an automated service that encompasses patent-pending technology for receiving and aggregating data from disparate financial institutions including banks and credit cards, the first such system in Japan. Furthermore, Money Forward is continuously expanding its partnerships with banks to achieve richer data and improved aggregation stability.

Tsuji says the app can automatically integrate data from over 2,600 institutions, and stands as the country’s largest PFM service with over 4.5 million users. Money Forward has been selected as a Google Play Best App for three consecutive years from 2014 to 2016.

Meanwhile, MF Cloud assists small to medium-sized businesses with a range of software services, including accounting/tax returns, expensing, invoicing, payroll and social security number management. It’s used by over 500,000 clients in Japan, roughly 2,000 of which are accounting firms.

Rapid Development Based on a Commitment to Users

Established in 2012, Money Forward already employs a staff of over 230—more than 40 percent of them engineers. This enables the company to quickly add new features and services as it adheres to a core value of user focus, such as a recently added MF Cloud feature that allows users to get direct loans from financial institutions, simplifying paperwork and screening processes.

Moving Forward to Become a Global Service

In the short term, Tsuji wants to expand the features and functionality of Money Forward’s services, including the capacity to support users with investing and insurance. He also hopes to form alliances with companies abroad offering fintech services such as payment, personal financial management, SaaS services or peer-to-peer lending to expand on the company’s existing domestic partnerships.

In the longer term, Tsuji views the shrinking Japanese population as a compelling reason to take Money Forward beyond Japan. “We already have top market share in Japan,” he says. “After becoming Japan’s No. 1 for business users as well, it would be wonderful to become Asia’s No. 1 money platform.”

Tsuji ultimately dreams of making his software a truly global service: “Our mission is to become a money platform for everyone,” he says.

Based on interview in January 2017