| By Jim Bruene on February 17, 2010 8:53 AM | Comments (4) |
I don't know if it has anything to do with the publicity Mint received in recent months following its acquisition by Intuit or the promotional links from Quicken's website, but the online PFM juggernaut just blew the roof off its monthly traffic. According to Compete, in January, Mint had 1.7 million unique visitors, 600,000 more than a year earlier.
To provide a little context, not counting the Dec. to April tax-time traffic spike at Intuit, Mint's traffic is now slightly HIGHER than that of its parent company (see chart #1 below). That gives you a little understanding of why Intuit coughed up $170 million for the startup.
Another way to look at it: Mint now has as much traffic as the tenth largest U.S. retail bank, BB&T (see chart #2).
The interesting question for 2010: Now that Mint is part of the establishment, what startup will rise up to challenge it? Or will the banks, back on a path to profitability, fill the need going forward?
Chart 1: Mint's traffic is now similar to Intuit's non-tax-time traffic
Source: Compete (link)
Chart 2: Mint now has about the same number of visitors as the tenth largest U.S. retail bank, BB&T
Note: Mint is blue line below
Source: Compete (link)
Note: For more information on the PFM space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.
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Wonder if this increase in traffic is perhaps "in-spite" of being purchased? After all, the Mint value proposition is perfect for the current economic realities. It would be interesting to know how much of the traffic increase is organic and how much could be attributed to Intuit PR and promotion.
For those that followed the acquisition by Intuit, there was grave fear that they would destroy such a fantastic financial manager. The internal memos that detailed how upset Intuit was that Quicken was so easily overtaken by a much smaller "start-up" company shows just how complacent that Intuit was with their "success."
We can only hope and pray that Inuit will honor their statements and allow Mint to continue to develop as the premier financial manager. Now, if only someone would come along and make QuickBooks obsolete just like Quicken now is...
These kind of applications are (in my oppinion) really usefull for users with multiple accounts because more and more people waste time checking every single account separately,
but.. how do you think this agregators can impact private banking customers?, they can change the way of doing business in such a relational business?
We can only hope and pray that Inuit will honor their statements and allow Mint to continue to develop as the premier financial manager.