Mint, one of the earliest and most popular personal finance apps, is shutting down, and its owner, Intuit, is encouraging users to switch to Credit Karma, its platform that provides free credit scores and helps users. Helps you track your money.
Yours said on Tuesday It was “reimagining” Mint as part of Credit Karma and Mint users would be able to transition to Credit Karma. Credit Karma will absorb Mint by Jan. 1, Intuit said in a statement Friday.
Mint has been one of the top online budgeting tools for years, with 3.6 million active users in 2021, according to bloomberg, Introduced in 2007, it was a game-changer in the world of personal finance, growing in popularity as more people turned to free online services to create budgets and track their income and spending.
The news of closure of Mint created an uproar From loyal Mint usersSome of whom said they were particularly upset that Credit Karma wouldn’t offer similar budgeting tools.
Steve Kim, a software engineer in Seattle, said he had been using Mint for three years and was disappointed to learn on TikTok that it was shutting down. Mr Kim, 42, said he was exploring options, but would consider Credit Karma.
“I looked at it briefly and it doesn’t look very good,” he said. “But if it’s an easy transfer I might give it a try.”
Intuit said in its statement Friday that it is “giving Mint users ample time to prepare for this change before their access to Mint is terminated.”
Intuit, owner of widely used financial software applications such as TurboTax, purchased Mint from its founder in 2009 for $170 million. At the time of the acquisition, Mint, which was privately held, had 1.5 million users tracking approximately $50 billion of assets and $200 billion of transactions.
Credit Karma helps its 130 million users boost their credit scores and access personalized loan recommendations. Intuit said Mint users will be able to transfer their linked financial accounts, historical balances and net worth graphs to Credit Karma, and they will be able to continue tracking their spending and net worth, and viewing cash flow.
But Credit Karma doesn’t offer a budgeting tool that allows users to set monthly budgets and budget by category, a favorite feature of Mint users. Mint allowed users to connect their spending accounts to the service, so that purchases could be automatically categorized as restaurants, groceries, or bills, making it easier to track spending.
In August, Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit’s chief executive, said Credit Karma had revenue of $1.6 billion in the fiscal quarter ending July 31. 9 percent less than the same period a year ago, The company estimates long-term annual revenue growth of 20 to 25 percent, he said in a conference call with investors.
Other popular budgeting apps include PocketGuard, Simplify, and You Need a Budget. Days after Intuit announced it was shutting down Mint, Monarch, a subscription-based personal finance app, said it had seen an increase in new users from Mint.
Val Agostino, Monarch’s chief executive and co-founder, said it made no sense for Intuit to continue investing in both Mint and Credit Karma given the significant costs of data-aggregation and running a personal finance app.
“Mint has always been a money-loser,” Mr. Agostino, Mint’s former product manager, said in an interview. “Given the revenue generated by Credit Karma, it makes sense to go that route.”
Before student loan payments resumed, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported in August that consumer debt had reached worrying levels in recent months, with US credit card balances exceeding $1 trillion. Credit card balances, the most prevalent type of household debt, were up 16 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2022.
