Palo Alto, CA-based Pageonce, formerly known as Netgate, said today that it has raised $15 million to further develop its personal financial tracking apps for the Web and mobile devices. New investor Morgenthaler Ventures led the round, which was joined by existing backer Pitango Ventures and individual investor Liron Petrushka, who chairs Pageonce’s board. The company has raised $25 million all told, and says its Web, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and Android apps have over 4.5 million users. ”As investors, we’ve been focused on both the mobile and financial services space for some time,” Morgenthaler partner Rebecca Lynn said in a statement. “Pageonce is a natural mobile play and a great bet to be a financial services category leader.”

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The online banking space is taking a cue from Apple’s iTunes App Store.

No, you won’t be seeing Sudoku puzzles or restaurant recommendation tools on your online banking interface, but you will be seeing plug-ins designed to enhance your online personal finance management experience. The marketplace for these apps, unveiled yesterday, is the Yodlee FinApp Store, and one of the first companies hawking its wares in the store will be Micronotes, a startup working out of the Cambridge Innovation Center.

Redwood City, CA-based Yodlee, a maker of online platforms for personal finance management founded in 1999, launched the FinApp Store as part of its newest software release, Yodlee 10. “We’re enabling new innovation to come to online banking at a much more rapid pace,” says Yodlee chief product officer Peter Hazlehurst. Apps available via the store include an automated tax filing tool from H&R Block, a savings app called BillShrink, and Micronotes‘ KulaMula FinApp, which aims to market deals to consumers as they work on their finances online.

“Our mission is to radically change the way marketing is done today,” says Micronotes senior vice president of field operations Christian Klacko, through targeted marketing and engaging the consumer in a conversation.

Micronotes makes the consumer data found in online banking profiles available to companies, who then engage the customers they think make the best fit for their products—based on details like transaction history—through surveys in the KulaMula app. Consumers using Yodlee’s finance management platform, either directly or through their financial institution, can choose whether or not to bring the KulaMula application into their interface. Those who opt in will see a dashboard of several different brands looking to market to the customers with specific coupons and offers. Each survey lists what product it centers around, for example the word “toys” would appear under the Sears logo on the dashboard if it’s marketing a toy coupon to consumers. Users answer a few questions from the brand, and at the end receive an e-mail offer, like $10 off of a $30 toy purchase. The questions typically center around consumers’ shopping habits regarding that particular product. For a demo of a survey, go here.

It sounds like there’s a lot at stake when it comes to security of the customer’s information, but Micronotes says that’s one of the many benefits of working with Yodlee. “Because we are working with Yodlee, which has all the security requirements and platform in place, we are … Next Page »

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Somebody at Intuit must have seen the writing on the wall. Last September, the Mountain View, CA, software company, which has been selling PC-based personal finance programs since 1983 via floppy discs, CD-ROMs, and downloads, paid $170 million to buy a two-year-old Web startup called Mint.com. If you believe, as I do, that almost everyone who uses a computer to manage their personal finances will be doing so using a Web-based service like Mint.com within a few years, then you have to conclude that Intuit got a great bargain.

In essence, Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU), by acquiring the one company that had the potential to destroy its personal finance business, bought that business an indefinite life extension. Imagine how much stronger Microsoft’s position would be now if it had bought Google when the search company was two years old, back in 2000, and you begin to get a sense of what I mean.

The move was unexpectedly insightful. Few companies have the wisdom to recognize that they’ve been superseded, let alone the courage to admit that they aren’t competent to reinvent themselves from within. As a result, Intuit, the maker of Quicken and TurboTax, has won back at least one customer, namely me.

I used Quicken for years, probably starting around 1996. At home I have an ancient Dell Inspiron laptop computer, purchased in 2004, that I have kept around far past its point of obsolescence—and long after switching the rest of my life over to my Mac—solely in order to run Quicken. (Until very recently, there wasn’t a decent version of Quicken for Mac.) But even that use tailed off around 2008, as I ran into more and more difficulties with the aging version of Quicken that I was running, and as the online alternatives grew more attractive. Finally, in the middle of 2009 or so, I stopped using Quicken altogether.

I haven’t missed it in the least, because the combination of Mint.com’s free service and my bank’s website give me all the information I need about the status of my savings, checking, investment, and credit card accounts. (I use Bank of America, which has pretty good online tools.) But now that Mint is part of Intuit, I’m back in the fold.

I should say up front that I was never an advanced user of Quicken, and neither do I make use of all of the features of Mint. Also, my financial situation isn’t very complicated—I’m single with no kids and no mortgage. Mainly, I just need to see all of my updated account balances in one place. I don’t care much (though I probably should) about comparing the performance of every fund in my 401(k) to the broader market. Plus, being a natural-born skinflint, I don’t need help from software to … Next Page »

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Hartford, CT-based Geezeo—which was one of the first New England Internet startups Xconomy ever profiled, back in August 2007—announced late Monday that it’s found the first customer for its new institutional service, a personal financial management suite it unveiled in February. Geezeo has focused up to now on providing financial management tools directly to consumers through its own website, but under its deal with Stanford Federal Credit Union (SFCU) in Palo Alto, CA, credit union members will see versions of Geezeo’s tools that are branded to look like they’re part of the credit union’s site.

Like Geezeo’s consumer service, the white-label “CreditUnion HQ” suite lets users view all their accounts in one place online, as well as create budgets, track their progress toward financial goals, discuss money issues with other members, and browse educational content.

“This economic climate demands that we look for new innovative ways to help give our members every advantage when it comes to managing their money more effectively,” said Ali Shafai, vice president of e-commerce at SFCU, in a statement about the partnership. “We expect that CreditUnion HQ will enhance member relations, increase retention, and attract a new generation of web-savvy members.”

SFCU is owned by 47,000 employees of Stanford University, Stanford Hospital, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. It claims to have been the first financial institution in the world to offer customers online banking.

Geezeo also offers a version of its white label service that’s tailored for banks, rather than credit unions, but it hasn’t announced any customers for this version.

“Building an institutional product to has been core to our strategy from the outset,” Shawn Ward, Geezeo’s co-founder, said in February when the company introduced its white-label personal financial management (PFM) suites. “The plan was to build and prove our consumer business and then launch an institutional model based on market demand. Over the last six months we have been approached by dozens of financial organizations looking to offer Geezeo PFM functionality to their customer/members. The time is right.”

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TheStreet.com, the investment news site headlined by famously loud-mouthed CNBC host Jim Cramer, said today that it’s making a strategic investment of its own in Framingham, MA-based Geezeo, the personal-finance website we profiled last August. TheStreet.com is putting $1.2 million into Geezeo in return for a 13 percent stake in the company, and has the option to buy the entire company for $12 million anytime in the next year.

Geezeo provides what I called “personal finance tracking for people who don’t buy personal finance software”—meaning 18-to-34-year-olds who need some way to manage their checking, credit, and retirement accounts but aren’t likely to buy Intuit’s Quicken, Microsoft Money, or the other boxed software packages for money management. But Geezeo is more than just a Web-based software service—it also provides social networking opportunities so that users can encourage each other along toward their financial goals, such as paying off credit cards or saving up for a big vacation. The site also provides tools for checking on account balances from mobile phones.

TheStreet.com—which was founded in 1996 and was one of the few financial-media websites to survive the dot-com crash—has been on an expansion kick designed to make it into a one-stop destination for consumer-level investment and financial information. In 2007 it acquired both StockPickr, a popular social networking site devoted to investing, and Bankers Financial Products Corp., the parent company of BankingMyWay and RateWatch.

“Geezeo is a natural place for visitors to the individual Web sites within TheStreet.com network to connect,” Thomas Clarke, TheStreet.com’s chairman and CEO, said in a press release about the investment—which, given recent history, seems likely to lead to a full acquisition. “Whether they are visiting TheStreet.com for market analysis, Stockpickr.com for stock ideas, BankingMyWay.com for the best online bank rates for CDs, savings accounts, interest checking, money markets etc., or MainStreet.com for personal finance information, Geezeo brings our audience together in an interactive arena that facilitates educated financial decision making.”

The guys at Geezeo are understandably elated about the investment. “Having TheStreet.com as a strategic partner/investor is hands down the best next step in Geezeo’s evolution,” Geezeo co-founder Peter Glyman wrote to me today (cribbing from a blog post). “Along with the capital needed to take Geezeo to the next level, our relationship with TheStreet.com will also help us reach millions of new potential users and expand our content offerings in the areas of personal finance and investing.”

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