Barclays Money Tools is currently available to Premier Banking customers, but will roll out to all Barclays online banking customers towards the end of the month. When available to you, it can be activated from the Feature Store.

According to Barclays, Money Tools has the following aims:

• 
  To give the customer detailed information about their spending habits
• To give the customer access to their historical income and spending breakdown over the last 13 months
• To allow the customer to take control of their spending by setting budgets
• To help customers plan for the future by setting savings goals

As with other PFM (personal finance management) tools, your spending and income are automatically categorised, and you get a graphical view of the breakdown:

You can also compare your money in versus money out by month, up to the previous 13 months, showing you the difference between what you’re earning and spending:

To help with budgeting, you can keep track of how much you’ve spent in each category, to see if you need to cut back in certain areas during the current month:

And to aid saving, you can set up savings goals and track your progress towards those goals:

Here’s a video of Barclays Money Tools in action:

It’s worth mentioning that there is no aggregation of non-Barclays accounts here, it’s purely data from your Barclays accounts which you’ll see in Money Tools, so it won’t give you the full view of your finances.

That said, the features it provides look useful, and previous experience of Barclays has given the impression that it is one of the most innovative banks when it comes to online banking, and these tools should help it continue to improve its online banking experience.

Barclays Launch “Money Tools” To Help Manage Your Money was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The idea behind the site, which has been developed by the same people behind the OrSaveIt savings app, is to encourage consumers to make conscious decisions about which savings and current account is really right for them.

From September 1st, banks will be required to switch a customer’s account to a competitor within 7 days, if the consumer requests so – rather than the 1 month timeframe as is currently allowed.

Banks have typically made their accounts difficult to leave, but the Office of Fair Trading has predicted 13 million of us will consider switching as a result of September’s legislation changes.

The OrSwitchIt comparison site allows you to compare the benefits and costs of current and savings accounts, considering benefits from car insurance to film subscriptions, including the smaller account providers as well as the ‘big four’ banking giants.

The simple site first asks how much you’re prepared to pay for a bank account, and then shows you a table of the features available for that price – you can then remove banks that you’re not interested in, and reorganise their order to make them easier to compare.

Once finished, you can get the results emailed to yourself for safe-keeping. You can also find out more information on each account, and apply for a new account through the site should you wish.

OrSwitchIt Aims To Get You A Better Bank Account was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Banco Santander, of which Santander UK is a part, is the largest bank in the Eurozone by market capitalisation, so this represents quite an achievement for iZettle, and promises a chance for it to become a mainstream payments processor, rather than a niche product.

“We want to bring iZettle to the world, and to do that we must have strategic partnerships with the world’s leading banks,” said Jacob de Geer, co-founder and CEO of iZettle. “Our relationship with Banco Santander is central to our transition from local to multinational services.”

Ramón Tellaeche, head of Santander Cards at Banco Santander, also commented on the deal:

“Millions of small business owners and professionals in the markets where we operate need an alternative to conventional credit card terminals, and simple software to manage and analyze their transactions. We are strongly committed to innovation that satisfies emerging needs of our customers, we believe iZettle’s innovative mobile technologies will be crucial to those merchants’ near and long term success.”

iZettle takes just a few minutes to set up, and works with all major payment cards. There’s no subscription, set up fee, monthly fee or minimum. Instead, iZettle merchants pay a percentage of each transaction. iZettle then electronically deposits payments in the seller’s bank account.

Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority regulates iZettle, whose services are EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) approved and compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

iZettle’s app for accepting credit card payments is now available for download free of charge from Apple’s App Store or Google Play in the U.K., Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland and coming soon to more countries. iZettle’s Chip & PIN and Chip & Signature card readers can be purchased at iZettle.com.

For tracking and analyzing sales, iZettle recently updated its free business management software with easy-to-read graphs that can be sorted by year, month or week. The software’s new metric boxes display revenue, top selling products, transactions, average payment volume and returning customers, to identify a business’ most loyal customers.

iZettle Boosted By €5m Banco Santander Investment was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Personal finance and banking aren’t obvious candidates for integration with this face-based smart technology, but a Ukrainian bank, PrivatBank, has come up with some ideas with how they see it being used in the future.

The video (below) shows a user using Google Glass to find a cash machine, transfer money whilst driving (let’s not bring health and safety into this), pay a bill by taking a photo and pay for a tank of petrol without going in to the service station.

Without wanting to be too much of a killjoy, in most of these cases, Google Glass isn’t really enabling the user to do anything that they couldn’t do just as easily on a smartphone.

Google Glass & Personal Finance was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The Twitter-like subscriber-only content will be produced by a team of journalists in New York, London and Hong Kong, together with guest writers and other FT journalists. It will be updated 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday.

The Next Web has taken a look at the tool:

The idea behind FastFT is that it doesn’t replace its existing reportage, merely it sits alongside its news, blogs, columns, videos and so on. Given it works across mobile too, it will probably appeal specifically to those on the move and it does bring additional value beyond simply following an FT Twitter feed. It doesn’t link through to articles, everything is presented within the feed.

Here’s a promo video for FastFT:

Financial Times “FastFT”: 24hr Financial Commentary was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The site features a series of hilarious* characters for you to choose from, including a Mountie**, a motivational speaker, a pair of hippies and a super hero. Once you’ve chosen a character, you add your name and the recipients name, plus the amount they owe you. You can then preview your video, where you’ll see the details you entered, before sending it to your friend.

The site has been developed in order to promote NatWest’s Mobile Banking App, which allows users to make payments of up to £250 to anyone with a VISA card and a mobile number. The recipient has 7 days in order to collect the payment.

* Did you detect a hint of sarcasm here?
** NatWest go to great lengths to explain that they have no affiliation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Send Friends Personalised IOU Reminders Courtesy Of NatWest was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The feature was announced at the recent Google I/O conference, and is explained on the Google blog:

Paying back your friends is now as simple as sending an email, whether you’re chipping in for lunch or reimbursing your roommate for your share of the rent. Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail, so you can quickly and securely send money to friends and family directly within Gmail — even if they don’t have a Gmail address. It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet balance, and low fees apply to send money using your linked credit or debit card.

You may have noticed the “low fees” in the last sentence there; it’s free to send money from your Google Wallet Balance or directly from a bank account that you link up to your GMail account. You can also pay with your credit and debit cards for a fee of 2.9% per transaction (minimum $0.30). It is always free to receive money.

This feature is currently only available in the US, but you can find out more here. Given GMail has in the region of 400-500 million users worldwide, it would be profitable for Google should it be rolled out globally.

NetBanker has taken a first look at this integration, highlighting the positives and negatives of paying by GMail. Others have suggested that P2P payment systems such as this struggle to gain traction not because they’re badly implemented, but because people simply do not have the need to make that many P2P transactions compared with commerce transactions, which makes you wonder whether ultimately Google will look to extend its functionality to paying companies.

The following video shows it in action:

Send Money Through GMail was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Over 400 of the new ATMs have been put into action today, with over 2,000 of the Co-Ops cash machines to be upgraded by the end of 2014.

The new functionality will be available to all LINK and Visa card holders using the machines, regardless of which bank they’re with, and will of course be of most interest to those who are blind or partially sighted. The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) have been campaigning for this type of ATM previously, and will by encouraged by this move to make cash machines more accessible.

Natwest/RBS have also committed to making the majority of its ATMs speech-enabled over the next few years.

Co-Op Talking Cash Machines was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

www.MyVoucherCodes.co.uk polled a sample of 2,136 UK adults in a bid to discover more about their spending habits. The survey formed part of ongoing research into the financial situations of Britons and respondents of this poll were required to answer specific questions about card payments. All respondents tended to pay for items on card when in-store, rather than using cash.

When asked ‘How many times in the last week have you had to enter the PIN for your main credit or debit card for in-store purchases?’ the average answer stated by respondents was ‘22’. Taking this answer into account, that would mean that the average Briton enters their PIN, on average, 1,144 times per year.

However, when the respondents were asked if they carried a copy of their PIN on them, in case they forgot it, 34% admitted that they did. These people were then asked where it was that they kept their PIN reminder and the most popular answers were as follows:

• Purse/wallet – 36%
• On mobile phone – 22%
• In pocket – 19%
• In bag – 17%
• Other – 6%

When asked if they had considered that carrying their PIN on them might be risky, 77% said ‘no’. All respondents were asked if they’d ever been a victim of card fraud, to which a fifth, 21%, said ‘yes’. Half of these people, 48%, were respondents that said they carried their PIN reminder on them.

Mark Pearson, chairman of MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, commented:

“You’d think that entering your PIN more than 1,000 a year would be enough to start remembering what it was. To see that a third keep a reminder of their PIN on them was alarming, particularly because most of these people keep it nestled in their purse or wallet and probably right next to their card. If a thief got their hands on the purse or wallet in question, they’d have an easy – not to mention free – spending spree!

“Consumers should do all they can to protect themselves from credit and debit card fraud and keeping a PIN reminder on them isn’t the way. When you get a new PIN, think of creative ways to remember it, or change it to a number that you will remember.”

Third Of Britons Carry PIN Reminder was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

As you can see from the graph below, card fraud increased massively between 2005/06 to 2009/10, but since then has begun to drop back down:

The CSEW data suggests that those most likely to be targeted by card fraud are males aged 45-54, with an annual household income of £50,000 or more.

The chart below shows the percentage of card holders affected by fraud within each household income group.

Via The Guardian.

Card Fraud Down For Second Year In A Row was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.