FinTech News
ASA Vault Adds Five More FinTech Tools to Its “App Store”
The “App Store as a Service” platform ASA has added five more FinTech tools to its roster.
About the additions and ASA Vault:
ASA has announced that it has added five FinTech applications to its ASA Vault app. These include PortfolioPilot, Guac, One Goal Finance, Credit Rent Boost, and Column Tax.
With ASA Vault, users can sign up for and access these services without providing their name, email address, or other data. That’s because ASA tokenizes and anonymizes information and does not share it with third-party apps unless users choose to allow it. ASA Vault also makes it easy for customers to sync their data across these platforms as well as cut off access at any time.
What they’re saying:
Commenting on the idea behind ASA, the company’s CEO and founder Landon Glenn said, “It has become increasingly obvious that the options for fintechs to effectively reach and help consumers are full of challenges; just look at what has happened with Banking as a Service over the past year. The ASA model overcomes these roadblocks, providing a secure and compliant way for FinTech to engage with already authenticated and connected consumers.”
Glenn continued “At the same time, consumers gain access to the latest technology to suit their unique needs, all through the bank or credit union they already know and trust. We believe this is the new way forward in financial services that delivers value for all.”
Elsewhere, the president of Guac — one of the new additions to ASA Vault — Ryan Armstrong said, “We are helping thousands of users, including Gen Z and Millennials, improve their financial wellness by putting money back into their pockets every time they swipe their debit and credit cards. We believe ASA and its framework are going to change the financial landscape by connecting financial institutions and their account holders with fintechs in a safe, secure and compliant marketplace. We’re excited to be live in ASA’s App Store, extending access to our financial wellness and savings tool to thousands of additional users.”
My thoughts:
After reading about ASA Vault and these added apps, I decided to take a closer look at how it worked. After all, I already have a Guac account I can try. Unfortunately, while Guac is now listed in the Apps tab, it’s still “coming soon.” Instead, I tried signing up for PorfolioPilot via ASA — which worked pretty well. I was able to create an account using my ASA login and even utilize an ASA forwarding email. Plus, the accounts I had linked to ASA automatically synced to PortfolioPilot (and this can be toggled on or off under the My Data tab in ASA Vault).
That said, there are a couple of downsides. First, the linked “apps” actually run in your mobile browser. Granted, they look and act much like an app, but you will still have that URL bar on your screen. The other downside is that, for some apps, there is a fee. I learned that when initially trying to open an account with One Goal Financial — which apparently charges $12 a month!
In any case, with so many FinTech apps now available, I am intrigued by the ASA Vault concept. Thus, I will at least be trying out the service for tool discovery in the future.
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