Why we're building Arlenz
Personal finance apps have a trust problem. Here's how we're solving it.
There's a saying in the tech industry: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." Nowhere is this more evident than in personal finance apps.
The broken state of personal finance apps
Over the past decade, we've seen an explosion of "free" budgeting apps, spending trackers, and portfolio management tools. On the surface, they seem like a good deal: the same features you'd pay for, at no cost. But dig deeper and you'll find a troubling business model.
These apps collect your most sensitive data: where you shop, how much you earn, what investments you hold, your net worth, your debt levels. Then they monetise it in ways that often work against your interests.
How "free" finance apps really make money
- →Data brokering. They sell your aggregated data, and sometimes individual records, to advertisers, credit bureaus, and data brokers.
- →Affiliate referrals. They push whichever credit card, loan, or financial product pays the highest commission, not the one that suits you.
- →Targeted advertising. They use your financial profile to serve high-interest credit offers exactly when you're most vulnerable.
- →Upselling premium services. They invent limitations on the free tier to push you toward paid plans that still monetise your data.
Mint's shutdown in late 2023 is a good example. After 15 years, Intuit closed the popular budgeting app and pushed millions of users onto Credit Karma, a platform that makes money mainly by advertising financial products and earning referral commissions when people sign up for credit cards and loans. The incentive is obvious: recommend whatever pays the highest commission, not whatever serves the user best.
Why users deserve better
Your financial data is among the most sensitive information you have. It reveals your lifestyle, your habits, your aspirations, your vulnerabilities. Monetising it causes real harm:
- Credit card offers targeted at people in debt trap them in cycles of high-interest payments.
- Data breaches expose complete financial profiles to criminals.
- Algorithms tuned for engagement keep users anxious rather than in control of their money.
- Recommendations that maximise referral fees rarely align with users' best interests.
Managing your finances shouldn't mean handing over your privacy. Arlenz doesn't answer to advertisers.
The Arlenz approach
We're building Arlenz on a simple principle: our business model must align with your interests. Here's what that means in practice:
Privacy-first architecture
Your data belongs to you. We don't sell it, share it with advertisers, or use it to push financial products. We collect only what we need and protect everything we do collect.
Transparent business model
We charge a subscription fee. That's how we make money. No hidden data sales, no affiliate commissions influencing our recommendations, no targeted advertising. When you pay us, we work for you.
Global accessibility
Most finance apps only work in a handful of countries where bank-aggregation services operate. Arlenz works everywhere, whether you have access to automatic bank connections or prefer to manage accounts manually.
Open architecture
Import and export your data freely. No lock-in, no proprietary formats designed to trap you. If you ever want to leave, you can take everything with you.
Beyond budgeting
We're also solving another problem: fragmentation. Right now you need one app for budgeting, another for investment tracking, maybe a spreadsheet for net worth, and yet another for financial-goal planning.
Arlenz brings spending, investing, net worth, and goal planning into one product. Because it sees all of that together, it can flag things a single-purpose app never would.
Helping you save money
Tracking your money is only half the job. Arlenz also helps you find ways to save:
- →Subscription detection. Arlenz spots recurring charges in your transactions and flags the ones you've forgotten about or barely use.
- →Redundancy spotting. Paying for three streaming services you never open, or two overlapping insurance policies? Arlenz catches the overlap so you can cut it.
- →Expense insights. Automatic categorisation shows where your money actually goes, and flags the categories that are creeping up.
Spending itself isn't the problem. Arlenz just makes sure it's intentional, so the rest can go toward your goals.
Join us
We're early. Arlenz is for people who want control of their finances without giving up their privacy. Join the waitlist if that's you.
