Mint.com

This article is about the web-based personal finance service. For the web analytics tool, see Mint (software). For other uses, see Mint.
Mint.com
Subsidiary
Industry Personal finance, Software
Founded 2006
Founder Aaron Patzer
Headquarters Mountain View, California, United States
Area served
United States, Canada
Products Rich Internet application, Mobile application
Revenue N/A
Number of employees
35 before acquired by Intuit in 2009[1]
Parent Intuit
Website mint.com

Mint.com is a free, web-based personal financial management service for Canada and the US,[2] created by Aaron Patzer. Mint originally provided account aggregation through a deal with Yodlee, but has since moved to using Intuit for connecting to accounts.[3] Mint's primary service allows users to track bank, credit card, investment, and loan balances and transactions through a single user interface, as well as create budgets and set financial goals.[4] In 2009, Mint was acquired by Intuit, the makers of Quicken and TurboTax.[5]

As of 2010, Mint.com claims to connect with more than 16,000 Canadian and US financial institutions, and to support more than 17 million individual financial accounts.[6] As of November 2013, Mint.com claimed to have more than 10 million users.[7]

Investment and finances

Mint raised over $31M in venture capital funding from DAG Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and First Round Capital,[8][9] as well as from angel investors including Ram Shriram, an early investor in Google.[10] The latest round of $14M was closed on August 4, 2009,[11] and reported by CEO Aaron Patzer as preemptive.[12] TechCrunch later pegged the valuation of Mint at $140M.[13]

In February 2008, revenue was generated through lead generation, earned via earning referral fees from recommendations of highly personalized, targeted financial products to its users.[14]

Sale

On September 13, 2009, TechCrunch reported Intuit would acquire Mint for $170 million.[15] An official announcement was made the following day.

On November 2, 2009, Intuit announced their acquisition of Mint.com was complete. The former CEO of Mint.com, Aaron Patzer, was named Vice President and General Manager of Intuit’s personal finance group, responsible for Mint.com and all Quicken online, desktop, and mobile offerings.[5] Patzer further added the features of the online product Mint.com would be incorporated into the Quicken desktop product, and vice versa, as two collaborative aspects of the Intuit Personal Finance team.[16]

Controversial practices

Security

Mint asks users to provide both the user names and the passwords to their bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial accounts, which Mint then stores in their databases in a decryptable format. This has raised concerns that if the Mint databases are ever hacked, both user names and passwords would become available to rogue third parties. Some banks support a separate "access code" for read-only access to financial information, which reduces the risk to some degree.[17][18]

See also

References

  1. "Everything You Wanted To Know About Startup Building But Were Afraid To Ask". TechCrunch. October 7, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-14.
  2. "Can Mint be used outside of the U.S.?".
  3. Ellis, Blake (December 2, 2010). "Yodlee no longer powers Mint.com's data aggregation tools". CNN.
  4. "Mint.com Now Tracks Cash and Pending Transactions". Retrieved 2010-04-19.
  5. 1 2 "Intuit Completes Acquisition of Mint.com". Intuit. November 2, 2009.
  6. Martha, Shaughnessy (19 April 2010). "Using Intuit's Technology Doubles Bank Access, Completes Users' Experience". Mint.com press release. Archived from the original on 28 September 2015. Retrieved 28 September 2015.
  7. "What is Mint? Your Financial Life All In One Place". Mint.com. Retrieved February 24, 2013. Mint has more than 10 million users who know their information is always secure.
  8. Vivek (May 23, 2007). "MyMint.com acquires Mint.com; raises $5 million". Startup Squad.
  9. Cutler, Kim-Mai (August 12, 2009). "Mint.com rakes in $14 Million in third round of funding". VentureBeat.
  10. Marshall, Matt (October 16, 2007). "Mint, online money manager, raises $4.7M". Venture Beat.
  11. "SEC FORM D". sec.gov. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
  12. Kincaid, Jason (August 12, 2009). "Full Details On Mint's $14 Million Series C Round". Tech Crunch.
  13. Arrington, Michael (September 2, 2009). "Mint is Worth A Mint: $140 Million Valuation". Tech Crunch.
  14. "How Mint's SmartSave Savings Engine Works". Mint.com. October 11, 2007. Retrieved 2008-02-24. Mint does make a small referral fee from advertisers on some offers. That’s what keeps Mint free.
  15. Arrington, Michael (September 13, 2009). "Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million". Tech Crunch.
  16. "Intuit Completes Acquisition of Mint.com". The Quicken Blog. November 2, 2009.
  17. "ING Direct Launches 'Read-Only' Access Codes for Financial Aggregation". 2011-05-26. Retrieved 2013-09-28.
  18. "Could mint.com be more secure, and if so, how?". IT Security Stack Exchange. Retrieved 2013-09-28.

Further reading

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