The world of finance is changing and changing fast – at the moment it looks like a down right drag-race to be the consumer’s friend.

Launching last month in bright green livery was Mozo (mozo.com.au) – apparently short for Money Zone.

Headed by Rohan Gamble, who’s previous incarnation in financial services was as general manager of Virgin Money Australia, the site is designed (it says) to give Australian consumers all the tools they need to make intelligent choices about money.

It’s a good site and an interesting idea – especially considering it’s an area already occupied by Cannex (cannex.com.au) and its spin off business rate city (ratecity.com.au) and Infochoice (infochoice.com.au).

Mozo’s point of separation seems not to be a stream of data about the rates on offer or even the products – but instead the fact that the data is consumer based.

In some ways it’s a neat idea – provide some or all of the tools for making financial decisions and then encourage consumers to provide feed back on what’s going on.

This idea is already popular in the UK – where the money saving expert and money supermarket sites are big business – but in comparison they are lean businesses

Quite how Mozo is going to monetise this proposition is unclear, or how it is going to capture value for the 18 months it says it has already spent building the business is also, at best, hazy.

What is also unclear is why Mozo think that consumer education is their job – when it’s something that the government claims to be serious about?

What is clear though is that these communities are already pretty well advanced on the web with sites like FatCats (fatcats.com.au) already doing pretty well in the data space.

займ на карту payps займзайм на карту от частного лицасрочный онлайн займ