The end (death? sunsetting?) of Mint brought back memories and raised some questions this week.
Credit Karma announced that it would be "reimagining" (nice word, CK!) Mint as part of Intuit Credit Karma. According to the company, "We have phased communications and user migration by design so the product team can ensure a smooth transition for Minters who decide to onboard to Credit Karma."
This is a smart move by Credit Karma (I might argue that it should have been done back in 2021).
The announcement, however, made me wonder: How many "Minters" are there?
My initial estimate was 7 trillion. I arrived at that number by making a straight line projection, taking its growth between 2006 and 2008, and forecasting forward 15 years.
It was (almost) a joke back at the beginning. Mint would announce some # of users, and 2 weeks later update that # by 2x. The growth was astronomical--but, I have to say, never corroborated by my consumer research which found far fewer users than what Mint claimed.
It raised the question of definitions. I asked consumers, "do you USE Mint?" Mint might very well have been reporting user registrations.
According to Wikipedia, "In 2016, Mint claimed to have over 20 million users." According to Bloomberg, however, Mint had 3.6 million monthly active users in 2021." That's an at least 82% loss in users (depending, of course, on how you define "users").
When Intuit acquired Mint for $170 million (a mere pittance compared to today's--or, at least, 2021's--valuations) around 2013, I was convinced Intuit would make Mint its bank-offered PFM tool, replacing FinanceWorks.
Jim Bruene of NetBanker thought so, too, writing: "Many of Intuit’s 1,100 online banking clients (500 of which use Intuit’s FinanceWorks PFM) will jump at the chance to integrate Mint."
That never happened because Intuit never did offer Mint to its bank customers.
I've seen some people this week refer to Mint as the "grandaddy" of PFM. That doesn't feel like the right description to me.
I think of Mint as the obnoxious, rich nephew to whoever is the real grandaddy of PFM. You know, the bratty kid who inherited a lot of money, but did little to earn it.
(Nov 5 addition: To support this, see this blog post from Sept 2010: https://lnkd.in/efPb74w5)
An unfair characterization, I admit, since the folks who built the tool did a good job of building it up to what it was (whatever the real # of users were).
But for the past 10 years, the PFM market has shot past Mint. I'm a big fan of Intuit, but the slipping of Mint from market leader to market laggard--whatever the real % decline in users is--has to be blamed on Intuit.
Here's hoping that Credit Karma can take Mint and make it a leader again.
💯 Jim Marous Brett King Jaime Punishill Mary Wisniewski Bryan Clagett Peter Glyman Shawn Ward Efi Pylarinou Alex Jimenez Alex Johnson
#banking #pfm #fintech #Mint
Exciting!