Pageonce teams up with UC Berkeley and University of Michigan economists to analyze trends in financial behavior PALO ALTO, Calif. – May 2, 2012 – Pageonce (pageonce.com), a new kind of wallet that helps you stay on top of your money and pay your bills, today announced a groundbreaking research effort to better understand how Americans make decisions about money.  Pageonce partnered with economists from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to produce the Pageonce Pulse Points report, which identifies and analyzes consumer economic trends and behaviors in the U.S. The first report studied two financial pulse points — credit limit breaches and bank overdrafts —and compared them to new unemployment claims filed from March 2011 to April 2012. The team found: US consumers experienced a 40% decrease in credit limit breaches from their 2011 high. US consumers experienced a 17% increase in bank overdrafts from their 2011 high. During the same period, new unemployment claims declined by 21%. “Traditional economic research lacks access to high-quality, high-frequency data. We’re very excited about the Pageonce data because it provides a comprehensive view into the real financial habits of Americans,” said Dr. Steven Tadelis from UC Berkeley. “With this data, we can significantly improve our understanding of consumer spending, saving and borrowing, as well as the macro-economic policies that impact consumer behavior.”

Making sense of money is tough for most Americans. That’s what makes Pageonce such a welcome app, giving our 6.5 million users a holistic view of their finances. This 360-degree perspective offers a wealth of insight into the financial habits of Americans at large, and the data for Pageonce Pulse Points report. To dive deeper into our data and identify interesting trends, Pageonce has partnered with an elite team of economists from two academic institutions, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to produce the Pageonce Pulse Points research. These economists bring a mix of expertise that focuses on the crossroads of economics and social science. Our academic dream team includes: Shachar Kariv, Professor and the Faculty Director of UC Berkeley Experimental Social Science Laboratory (Xlab), a laboratory for conducting experiment-based investigations of issues of interest to social sciences. Dr. Kariv studied at Tel Aviv University and New York University, where he earned a Ph.D. in economics.  He was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship for Economics (2009-10).  He currently serves on the board of editors, The America Economic Review, and as co-editor, The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics.

After more than 12 years leading online marketing and product teams at various consumer finance and payment companies, joining Pageonce was a natural next step. My quest was to “bring it all together” and work for a company that is truly customer-centric. Uniquely positioned to represent the consumer and not financial institutions, Pageonce brings value to consumers that few other companies in the financial services and mobile space have been able to accomplish to date. As an early and devoted Personal Finance software user since the mid-1990s, I’ve always been determined to effectively manage my finances and stay on top of my bills. To this day, I still remember a day in late 1999, having lunch in downtown San Francisco, dreaming of the possibility of being able to view and manage my finances on a mobile phone. Over the years, searching for and using a variety of products solving only parts of my vision of financial control regardless of my location, I soon realized this dream was a bit premature.

Yesterday, CNET covered our intent to move to a new pricing model for bill pay – PageOnce drops subscription fee. We’re super excited about this move and think it’s a significant step forward in bringing bill pay to more Pageonce users. What’s happening? Today, we offer bill pay through Pageonce Gold – a $4.99 subscription service. Next month, we plan to discontinue the Gold service and replace it with pay-as-you-go pricing. This means we’ll include a per transaction price for each payment rather than a monthly subscription price for all-you-can-eat payments. We’re still determining the exact per transaction price. Why? We’re making this change because we want more users to have access to bill pay. We want to give users the ability to try the service without a commitment. The $4.99 monthly price was too big a barrier. We tested transaction pricing with about 15,000 users, who overwhelmingly chose transaction pricing over monthly subscription pricing. What does it mean? Current Gold users on Android can remain Gold for as long as they’d like or can switch to per transaction pricing. All other Gold features – Refresh All Accounts, No Banners Ads, Phone Support – will continue for Gold users even if they decide to move to per transaction pricing. Non-Gold users will now have access to bill pay without the monthly commitment. We are finalizing the details with Apple for current Gold users on iOS. More to come here. Thanks for your continued support. Best, Guy Guy Goldstein, CEO and Founder, Pageonce

In the past couple of weeks you may have received an e-mail encouraging you to change your passwords if you use one password for multiple accounts. On December 12, Gawker Media announced that their servers had been compromised, resulting in a security breach at Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot. Any user who registered an account on any Gawker Media website (and didn’t log in using Facebook Connect) was advised to assume that their username and password were included in the leaked information. In addition, users who use the same login information for Gawker Media as they do for any other website were urged to change their passwords.