#pageonce

PageOnce is taking on Intuit (bothMint and Quicken) with an upgrade to its finance service that allows bill payment from your smartphone. Few other personal finance services offer bill pay, and none offer the detail that PageOnce does.

What you get

Your VIP Gold subscription gives you:  • Unlimited Bill Pay • Banner Ad-Free Experience • VIP Phone & Email Support • One-Tap Refresh-All on All Accounts • Unlimited Number of Accounts • Personal App Lock Code • Unlimited Manual Bills • Access from Any Device • Bank-Level Security • Financial Peace of Mind

Watch a short video about their new Bill Pay feature 

2007-2011 Pageonce, Inc. PO Box 60952 Palo Alto, CA 94306       

  PageOnce dives into the detail on your bills to show you not just what you own on a bill, but for what: How many minutes on your smartphone bill; All your credit card charges. And this is without signing up for electronic billing at your bank or service provider, so you'll still get your paper bills in the mail as backup.

Another good feature: Every time you go to pay a bill, you can see how much money you have in each cash account, and select the account you want to pay it from.

The PageOnce mobile bill pay app gives you more data than you'll get from your bank (or Quicken) if you are accustomed to paying bills from there, and more control than you'll get from your billers if you've been paying your bills from their sites.

It's a great little app, and I recommend it--if you can get over the discomfort of having so much financial data and control funneled through one point. At least there are good security protocols in place. For example, there's a PIN on the app itself, and you can go on the Web to lock out access to a mobile device if it's lost or stolen.

I've been using both PageOnce & Mint to see my bills. I do like how they send you and email when a payment is due and also notify you on my phone. 

PageOnce itself is free; the bill pay option is $4.99 a month, with no limit on the number of bills you can pay. I just upgraded to the Gold Membership which will cost me $5 a month. Let's see if it is really worth it. I think just having the convenience of being able to pay my bills anytime anywhere with just a touch would actually help me stay on track.

As far as the business of offering this service, that might be a bit more of a battle. While PageOnce offers convenience and strong features, the fact is it doesn't do much that users can't already do elsewhere, either for free or at a price that's buried in other fees (I'm looking at you, banks). It does bill pay better, but how much will people pay in order to pay?

PageOnce believes that mobile users will see the value, and that's why the company has made the curious decision to release this feature on the iPhone app well before they make it available on the Web version of the service. You can set up payees on the Web site, but to actually make the payment, you need the app. PageOnce COO Steve Schultz explained to be that the company is targeting the very busy user, or the traveling professional, who sees the value in being able to manage their finances when they're sitting down waiting for a plane.

I think this strategy will limit uptake on this feature, but I still like the app a lot and I can't fault the larger plan of bringing more control to users who pay their bills electronically.

Only a few hours into the blog, and I'm already getting feedback. This is what I love.

So one of my close friends brought up a great online tool for budgeting and account planning that he uses, Mint.com. While I have used it in a limited capacity, I haven't really explored it too much in depth.

I can, however, use this opportunity to offer a similar website that I use on a daily basis: Pageonce. They are similar in many ways, from what I gather, but Pageonce is more geared toward account management than financial planning. You can associate all of your bank accounts, credit accounts, student loans, utilities, phone bills, and more. You can even connect to your travel accounts, Netflix queues... the list is quite comprehensive. If you're looking for a one-stop application to connect all your accounts at a glance, I highly suggest using this site. There are even Android and iOS apps for your mobile device to keep you connected wherever you are. I use it every day to check my account balances and bill due dates.

Now when it comes to financial planning, Mint seems like a great opportunity that I should definitely delve further into.