(I tried to nail down the exact number of registered users Wesabe had to no avail. I vaguely recall the site topped 200,000 registered users some time ago, but that’s completely unverified.)

Tantalizing, right? Well, it turns out siphoning Wesabe users isn’t all that easy. MoneyStrand, another San Francisco PFM, took the plunge just on the day Wesabe went poof. Suffice it to say, the transition has not been smooth for ex-Wesabeites (or is it Wesabites?).

The challenge is that Wesabe users can’t seem to be able to import the tags and categories they previously set for their merchants on Wesabe. This shortcoming could be tough for some, if, say, they had tagged certain merchants for specific tax implications, only to lose that tag on import. To get a sense for the frustration, go here.

All this points to a plain truth: that data import and export remains a task of epic proportions when it comes to financial services. Even the PFMs themselves are not fully interoperable — which is the fundamental shortcoming of traditional banks, remember — and PFMs were created to make things easier for consumers. We’ve got a long way to go, folks.

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As an aside, here is a good post-mortem on Wesabe.