Citibank Joining Rush to Quicken, Microsoft Money

Citibank has joined the group of financial institutions that plans to offer on-line banking services through the two leading brands of personal financial software.

Although the New York money-center has not made any public announcement, Citibank does expect to provide account access via PC using Intuit Inc.'s Quicken and Microsoft Corp.'s Money, said Susan Weeks, a bank spokeswoman.

In July, 19 banks and financial service companies announced that they would be offering on-line account access via Quicken, the most popular personal finance software on the market. Citibank was expected to be part of this group, but the bank was not party to the announcement.

Ms. Weeks said that Citibank was in talks with Intuit at the time, but that an agreement had yet to be finalized.

Citibank, like the other banks in Intuit's fold, is hoping to make these services available as soon as today, the same day as the long- awaited debut of the new version of Quicken.

But, Ms. Weeks said, getting the service up and running "is not going as smoothly as we hoped," a sentiment expressed by several of the other banks in the group.

She admitted there are "some systems issues" related to connecting the bank to Intuit Services Corp., the back-end processor that handles bill payments made through Quicken and Microsoft's Money.

All the financial institutions that plan to provide on-line access through Quicken also plan to offer - or already are offering - the same service through Money. The financial institutions all connect to the same bill payment processor, Intuit Services Corp., with which they sign their contracts.

The other financial institutions in this group include: Chase Manhattan Corp., Chemical Banking Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., American Express, First Chicago Corp., Smith Barney, and U.S. Bancorp.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER