ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The software company that owns TurboTax and Mint just announced another big purchase.
Intuit, which also owns QuickBooks, announced Monday it was buying the free credit monitoring service Credit Karma for a cool $7.1 billion.
The move will help Intuit corner the tax filing software market but, more importantly, gives the company access to the financial data of Credit Karma’s millions of users.
This isn’t Intuit’s first major move in gobbling up competition. Mint has been hugely popular with millennials in helping track spending and understanding finances and was bought by Intuit in 2009.
But the Credit Karma acquisition adds another layer to Intuit’s ability to generate income. While the company has made money the old-fashioned way through its paid services like TurboTax, the ability to generate more income through targeted ads is based on the financial data of Credit Karma’s users.
“Intuit really does have a data 'double-dip,'” said Jack Kramer and Nick Martell on Tuesday’s episode of the Snacks Daily podcast. “It owns TurboTax, Mint, QuickBooks and now Credit Karma. First, it tries to get you to pay for those services like using QuickBooks to figure out the taxes for your small business.
"Then, it starts making money off your data by showing you ads first based on the data it knows about all your finances. Again, it’s got that credit score and knows that maybe, probably you eat a lot of Chipotle."
The acquisition is still pending the approval of regulators as Intuit has said it hopes to finalize the purchase later this year.
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