Kublax launched in 2007 after winning Seedcamp, giving it €50,000 and help from digital entrepreneurs, and attracted angel funding estimated at under €1 million a year later. Its product was attractive, letting account holders understand their spending more easily than the banks’ own, somewhat poor websites, and see more than one account. It effectively did the same thing as Mint, which was bought by Intuit last year for $170 million but which still doesn’t work with UK accounts.

And the space was getting crowded - MoneyDashboard raised £1 million for the same purpose late last year. Online bank facillitator Yodlee underpins all three sites, amongs others.

The bosses’ email continued…

“We are sorry that we have not been able to repay your trust in Kublax and particularly disappointed not to be able to launch the new enhanced version of the service which was being shaped to a very large extent by your Feedback on the current service.

“Kublax’s partner, Yodlee, will be deleting all user data, including online banking details from its servers. Once deleted no further information will be gathered and stored for Kublax customers. Your transactional data will also be completely erased from our servers by close of business on Friday 19th February. We will not pass your data on to any third parties.”

Updated: The pair emailed users again three days later (Friday afternoon) to say…

“We are very happy to report that we are currently in advanced discussions with a UK based consumer finance website, SimplyFinance, to find a way to keep the Kublax site up and running.

“As a result, our service will not shut down today as we had initially feared, and we will be working very closely with SimplyFinance to arrive at a long term solution which will allow us to keep the Kublax site and services available to you indefinitely.

“We will give you a further update on Monday. “