Intuit Inc. has attached its familiar Quicken brand to an account aggregation service, hoping that consumers will pay it for online financial management that is widely available elsewhere for free.
Though Quicken Online shares a brand name with Intuit's desktop personal financial management software, the new service more closely resembles online aggregation sites like those run by Geezeo Inc., Mint Software Inc., and Wesabe Inc.
Intuit is not trying to steal customers from rivals, said Jim Del Favero, its product manager for Quicken.
"Our competition is nothing. It's people who do nothing" to manage their finances, he said. "Solving that for us was more critical than moving the desktop customers to the Web."
Where Intuit differs most from its rivals is in how it intends to make money from Quicken Online: by charging consumers a monthly fee. Other companies typically make the service free to consumers and get revenue from other sources, such as advertising.
Another difference is that Intuit has its own online banking business. It bought the online banking vendor Digital Insight Corp. last February, and has upgraded its hosted system to provide features more commonly available in financial management software, which Intuit markets to banks as FinanceWorks.
One of these features, RealBalance, is essentially a projection of how much money a person has after subtracting upcoming debits. This feature and terminology has carried over from FinanceWorks to Quicken Online.
Though FinanceWorks has no aggregation component, "we do actually share some back-end components with FinanceWorks and we're working with the FinanceWorks team," Mr. Del Favero said.
The differences between Quicken Online and other aggregation services are crucial to its gaining acceptance among users, Mr. Del Favero said.
The fee exists because, after consulting with several finance professors, Intuit learned that "a lot of people don't value things that are free," Mr. Del Favero said. Intuit is using its Quicken brand — one it avoided using with its online banking product because of its association with desktop software — to address the issue of trust.
"Having a trusted brand that's familiar … is important to ease people's fears and let them know who we are," he said.
Edward Woods, a senior analyst for the Boston market research firm Celent LLC, said Quicken Online "could prove to be a very profitable venture."
Though it costs about $3 a month, versus $30 TO $90 for the desktop version of Quicken, the online service could be more expensive over time.
The monthly fee is continuous, he said, whereas "usually a PFM user was safe for three years" or more before product upgrades would compel the customer to purchase a new version of the software.
There may be some concern among Intuit's online banking clients that this product competes with FinanceWorks, but Mr. Woods said the monthly fee addresses that — presumably, many Intuit banks would not be charging for online banking access and can still promote the Intuit brand to their customers.
Intuit, of Mountain View, Calif., faces a lot of competition from vendors that do not charge for their aggregation service, but it has the brand recognition to overcome the price hurdle, Mr. Woods said. It also makes Intuit appear to be a more trustworthy choice than newer names consumers are unfamiliar with, he said.
"I would be very afraid if I were any of the Wesabes, the Geezeos, the Mints," he said. The Quicken brand "is stronger than all of theirs put together — times five."
