Until 1998, the Los Altos resident served as a top executive with VeriFone, the Redwood City company that builds the credit card-swipe devices used by a vast majority of retailers around the globe. While there, Bertman started VeriFone's electronic commerce division, which designed software and smart-card devices for firms to use in doing business over the Web. Bertman, who earned a master's degree in applied mathematics and computer science at Stephens Institute of Techno-logy in New Jersey, previously worked as an engineer for Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. While working as an angel investor, he got together with former VeriFone alum Myles Suer and Jeff Hatch, a Web consultant for Wells Fargo Bank, and began discussing ideas for a new business that would provide personal finance services to consumers over the Internet. Banks and other financial institutions want you to stay and buy their products and services, so you wonder if they are really likely to have a consumer's best interest at heart.
Banks disagree, and have generally resisted the efforts of aggregator sites.
Earlier this year, banking giant First Union sued Secure Commerce Services, a New Jersey aggregator, for taking information without consent and storing it in an insecure fashion. First Union later pulled the suit. According to Bertman, banks have begun to lower their resistance to aggregators in recent months. In fact, Bertman said eBalance is in discussions with several unnamed banking institutions about incorporating its service. That's why financial institutions have shifted a lot in the last few months from trying to stop us to moving into a position of how they can use us to their advantage.