MUFG Completes Stock Transfer of Moneytree
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, its consolidated subsidiary MUFG Bank, WealthNavi, a consolidated subsidiary of MUFG Bank, and shareholders of Moneytree have entered into a stock transfer agreement dated July 31, 2025, and as August 29, 2025, MUFG Bank has acquired the issued shares of Moneytree. As a result, Moneytree will become a consolidated subsidiary of MUFG Bank. Following this stock acquisition, WealthNavi plans to acquire some Moneytree shares from MUFG Bank.
Executive Summary
About Moneytree
- Founded in 2012, connects with 2,500+ financial institutions/services
- Provides API services to ~120 companies through "Moneytree LINK"
- Offers personal finance management app and business cash flow management tools
- Has ~6.5 million individual users
Strategic Goals
- Integration with MUFG's planned digital bank launching in H2 2026
- Enhancement of MAP (Money Advisory Platform) with AI-driven financial advice
- Cross-selling opportunities between MUFG's 60M customers and Moneytree's 6.5M users
- Strengthening corporate lending through better cash flow data analysis
1. Overview and Characteristics of Moneytree
Since its founding in 2012, Moneytree has been providing data through its "Moneytree LINK" API service to approximately 120 companies across various financial institutions, ERP and accounting software companies, and fintech companies, connecting with over 2,500 financial institutions and services through its secure and open financial data infrastructure. Moneytree's services have significant strengths in their flexibility to adapt to any application interface and their consideration for security and privacy. As a highly reliable financial data platform, adoption is expanding across a wide range of industries. For individuals, the company provides "Moneytree," a personal asset management service that automatically manages bank accounts, credit cards, electronic money, miles and points, and securities accounts in one place. AI automatically categorizes expenses for effortless household budget management, and features include notifications for large expenses and points nearing expiration.
Moneytree is one of the few companies capable of connecting with over 2,500 financial institutions and services, backed by its high technical capabilities to efficiently and accurately collect complex information from various financial institutions and high security reliability to protect customers' asset information. The company has maintained and provided this platform for approximately 13 years since its establishment, supporting the digital transformation of the entire financial industry from both technical and UI/UX design perspectives, and has supported the innovative service development of other financial institutions and fintech companies.
2. Strategic Direction Following the Stock Acquisition
MUFG upholds the purpose "Be the world's most trusted financial group" and will expand value delivery to customers in the following strategic directions after completing this stock acquisition, to provide financial services that are easy to understand for everyone and can be entrusted throughout their lifetime. After the stock acquisition, Moneytree will continue to maintain its policy of providing fair services to companies and financial institutions other than MUFG as an open technology platform that emphasizes openness, as it has done previously. Additionally, MUFG will support the establishment of systems to maintain and improve the highly reliable financial data platform that Moneytree has cultivated and the high security standards for protecting customers' asset information, and to continue providing open and fair services.
(1) Feature Implementation in Digital Bank and MAP, and Optimal Proposals Through Rich Data Integration
Considering the environmental changes surrounding retail finance in Japan, MUFG will open a completely new concept digital bank in the second half of fiscal year 2026 to respond to customer needs more quickly and accurately. As a core function of this digital bank, MUFG plans to implement MAP (Money Advisory Platform), a comprehensive advisory platform that MUFG Bank and WealthNavi are jointly developing to solve customers' money concerns throughout their lifetime. MAP aims to provide optimal proposals through algorithms and AI based on customers' various data. Moneytree has strengths in technology to integrate and structure diverse data obtained from multiple financial institutions and services and build highly accurate predictive AI models. By analyzing and utilizing the rich household and behavioral data of approximately 6.5 million individual users in a form that does not identify individuals, MUFG believes they can further sophisticate model accuracy and proposal content to provide more suitable value for each individual.
Going forward, MUFG will continue to value customers' privacy and choices, combining Moneytree's diverse data and high technical capabilities with MUFG's products and services to provide value closer to customers' ideals.
(2) Mutual Customer Base Expansion
MUFG conducts business with approximately 60 million customers across the group. MUFG will introduce Moneytree's user-friendly personal asset management service to these customers, and for Moneytree's approximately 6.5 million individual users, MUFG will promote measures for mutual customer base expansion, such as introducing MUFG Group services within the Moneytree app with customer consent.
(3) Collaboration in the Corporate Domain
MUFG aims to achieve sophistication of AI screening models through data aggregation with approximately 1,500 financial institutions, and support for MUFG Bank's SME lending business through "Moneytree Business," an AI-equipped SaaS service that automates cash flow management and financial management operations for small and medium enterprises. Moneytree already has collaborative achievements with multiple financial service companies and is actively developing lending decision support utilizing cash flow data as a growth area. Through these efforts, MUFG will create high-value-added financial services in the corporate domain as well.
Norbert Gehrke
