Arkkeo Sees Growth In Important Document & Receipt Platform

    Keeping track of receipts is no fun. I know you’re there with me, but I don’t think we say it outloud enough. One startup tackling the whole receipt and ‘important papers’ ecosystem is Arkkeo, who has built an online platform to track and store all those documents that get sent your way from official sources.

    The way they see it is that it’s a mutual benefit for everyone involved. People like the idea of going paperless, but email is broken in the sense that inboxes are clogged and messy. In one of their surveys, they found 94% of respondents like the general concept of having one service rule their receipts. Meanwhile 50-70% also would like this type of service to grab the more important stuff, like insurance, finance, and health papers into one place.

    Companies also hate the costs involved with sending a physical piece of paper your way, and are promoting paperless billing left and right. So far, Arkkeo has been able to grab utilities like Elisa and Helsingn Energia in Finland, as well as lots of big-box stores and hotel chains in the U.S. and Finland. They’re also plugged into Paypal, letting you store receipts from your online purchases on Arkkeo.

    For a company like Saunalahti, my phone carrier, I had to log in with my Saunalahti account credentials, and then I started receiving my bills and documents right away. For a store like CVS, an American Pharmacy chain, you plug in your loyalty number to get connected.

    One of the strategies they’re employing is organizing your documents using a graphical search, instead of throwing it in a tree structure where you have to click around all over the place to find a document. Instead, by emphasizing search, Kohila says he can find any document in about five seconds.

    The focus of Arkkeo has been on companies that provide really valuable documents. So far, the type of companies where there is a more hands-on sales process are located in Finland, but 3/4 of their plugged-in companies are international. “We want to have a global presence, but when you have to meet with companies, then it’s Finland,” says CEO Tuomas Kohila.

    Kohila tells us that the sales have started coming inbound as well, which much be a huge mental step for the company. Right now seems to be the time they can really grow. They have the system in place and tested, and hope to have over 150 companies plugged into the platform by the end of the summer. Today they have just under 50.

    Arkkeo also offers an iPhone and Andorid app that lets you snap pictures of receipts and plug it into Arkkeo’s system.

    We’ve seen a similar startup, Warrantify, pop up in Finland, who focused exclusively on warranty documents. It remains to be seen if Arkkeo will be helped or hindered by having a wider focus, but time will tell. Regardless, the service is free to use and nicely collects my documents, so it’s worth checking out.