YNAB Leverages MX Account Aggregation and Data Enhancement to Help Consumers Better Manage Money
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YNAB (previously You Need A Budget) is a simple method and budgeting app that has taught millions of people to change their relationship with money. People find YNAB because they want to pay off debt and make financial progress — they stay because they've stopped fighting about money and have never slept better. More than just a budgeting app, YNAB offers an ever-evolving list of helpful features, and a wealth of resources, including free workshops, videos, podcasts, articles, guides, a book, and award-winning customer support.
YNAB uses a zero-based budgeting system which guides spending decisions through a simple set of habits, asking consumers to make a plan for every dollar they earn, or in other words, give each dollar a specific job. This helps them become more intentional with their spending so they can spend purposefully, save aspirationally, and even give generously.
However, with various financial accounts spread across different financial institutions and fintechs (checkings, savings, credit cards, loans, etc.), it’s difficult for consumers to get a clear picture of their finances. YNAB needed a way to enable consumers to easily connect all of their financial accounts so that they can use YNAB to help them meet their financial goals without the need to manually enter transactions into the tool.
YNAB turned to MX to enable its customers to easily link their external financial accounts into its app so that they always have up-to-date transaction data. Transactions form the foundation of a functioning and real life spending plan, and those who use YNAB’s Direct Import feature expect a high quality experience from start to finish. YNAB is invested in the health of connections even beyond the initial connection experience, because reliable connection health, excellent data quality, and frequent transaction imports will create more engagement and trust in YNAB over time.
Creating a linked account is an essential part of onboarding with YNAB, and 90% of users who start the linked account flow using MX account aggregation are able to create at least one linked account. Additionally, they see more than 97% aggregation success rate with more than 57% of the connections made via secure OAuth connections. These OAuth connections average about 4 seconds to connect — allowing YNAB customers to see a near-instant view of their finances in one place. In total, MX aggregates an average of 13 accounts connected per user, representing more than one million connected accounts.
In the beginning it was simply the data aggregation service that we needed MX to provide. And over the years, it’s grown into more of a partnership… We’re both wanting to do the same thing in the world when it comes to people’s finances. YNAB wants to help people gain control of their money and MX wants to empower the world to be financially strong.
Jannelle Worrell
Bank Connections Lead, YNAB
In addition, MX data enhancement services provide cleansed and categorized transactions that feed into YNAB’s interface so YNAB can properly categorize spending automatically for its users and present it in a way that lessens the burden on consumers trying to make sense of indecipherable raw transaction data as they manage their money. Instead, using MX, transactional data is cleansed and classified into simple, human-readable descriptions, making it easy for consumers to identify, organize, and act on financial data.
“If we want our users to be in their budget, making good decisions with their money, being able to fund what they want to do in their life, we don’t want them to have to worry about a broken connection or have to worry about the data coming in wrong. That’s just a nuisance. That’s keeping them away from what’s most important,” said Jannelle Worrell, Bank Connections Lead at YNAB.
Enable consumers to easily link to external accounts to gain a comprehensive view of their finances.
Deliver lasting account connections that are reliable and secure for consumers with a more than 97% aggregation success rate.
Provider cleansed and categorized transaction data to make it easier for consumers to understand and sort their transactions.
MX’s account aggregation solutions enable consumers to easily connect and view all of their financial accounts in one place — and give financial providers full visibility into consumer financial data to better meet their needs.
MX offers a comprehensive suite of data enhancement services to deliver enhanced, verified financial data to improve money experiences, drive new growth opportunities, enhance decision making, and make better use of time and resources.
Explore how MX can help you get the most from financial data and build better money experiences for consumers.