Intuit has decided to phase out its web-based personal finance program Quicken Online, after its recent acquisition of competitor Mint.com. Plans are to suspend Quicken Online in the next six to nine months. The decision was made by Mint founder and CEO, Aaron Patzer, who now heads up Intuit’s Personal Finance Group.
This move is not surprising, as there is really not much point in continuing to run two separate online personal finance management sites. It makes more sense for Intuit to concentrate on the more popular Mint.com service, which currently has 1.7 million users, most of which use it every month. Quicken Online has a similar number of users but these are currently much less frequently using the service.
Quicken Online customers will see their data migrated over to Mint.com. A few useful features from Quicken Online will be incorporated into Mint such as the ability to enter cash transactions and record checks that have not yet cleared. Customers will also soon benefit from tax preparation features in Mint.com, such as is provided by Quicken software. For example, business expense transactions can be marked as tax deductible throughout the year, making tax preparation quicker and easier.
Customers can look forward to an improved product incorporating the best features of both Mint and Quicken Online.
