I don't get it. You're giving your bank account username and passwords to the site. Can't Joe Shmo behind the scenes capture this information, go into your accounts, and wreak havoc?
Something seems really iffy about this concept. It scares me.
Calvin Crone
· 2 years ago
Interesting product, though surely a major barrier in getting people to use it will be convincing them hand over their online banking details? I see there's a page on mint.com explaining that it's very secure, but still... online banking something most people are pretty sensitive about.
Sebastian
· 2 years ago
Awesome product, awesome business model, awesome success rates (given that they're correct), awesome video.
Yonga Sun
· 2 years ago
This is really an amazing product! I sincerely hope that Mint will someday be tweaked for use in the Netherlands, where I live. Amazing how easy the setup is and how easily understandable the data is presented. The "Save Money" feature is worth a lot, literally! Thanks for this interesting interview! Cheers, Yonga
Eugenio
· 2 years ago
Yes, the business model is somewhat "easy" to understand (assuming "they" can use all of "your" information to spot saving opportunities). But, the same holds true even for a single bank or financial institute? I mean...what if a bank decides to "buy" Mint? Againg, assuming they cannot buy only the information they need... Can they be allowed to do so?
sriram
· 2 years ago
good going mint! woohooo!
John Trainor
· 2 years ago
It's a great product. It's really well-done. The only complaint I have is that it is really hard to demo to friends without showing them too much about yourself. :-)
Dan Guy
· 2 years ago
I wish it could access my accounts. I've been clicking "Try again" since 6pm PST last night. Even at 1am PST I couldn't get it working.
Jeff Putz
· 2 years ago
Yes, the product is remarkably incapable of scaling. If it's awesome, I wouldn't know because it can't connect to my bank.
Dean Williams
· 2 years ago
If Mint did a little bit of research, they would have known that Yodlee already does the features that Mint claims to do.
$50K won't be enough for the litigation fees for infringing on Yodlee's data aggregation patents.
DW
michael
· 2 years ago
It's an awesome program
Dean Williams is a dolt
· 2 years ago
Mint uses Yodlee on the backend. I doubt there will be any litigation.
A.Falk
· 2 years ago
Re DW: turns out that Mint is actually using Yodlee (just like Microsoft Money), they just add a spiffier Web 2.0 UI and a way to target tons of ads at people - all under the pretext of helping them save money.
Re the video itself: Aaron actually says that unlike Quicken, where adding a few accounts takes one hour, in Mint you can to it in 5 minutes. That's quite bold and completely untrue. Going to Mint today, this is the message I get for adding an account (that I've been trying to add for 3 days now):
Mint is currently experiencing delays adding accounts.
Your accounts will continue to process in the background. It may take up to an hour for your transactions and balances to come through.
Usually linking an account takes 30-90 seconds, but since winning TechCrunch40, and being featured in PCWorld, Digg, and San Francisco Chronicle our volume has gone up over 100x.
Quicken: 1 hour -- Mint: more than 3 days.
See also this post on my blog about their scalability issue:
Looks a lot like Wesabe to me. Except Wesabe offers an API so the features can be used outside the site. http://www.wesabe.com
Dean Williams
· 2 years ago
If it's true that Mint is using Yodlee as its data aggregating engine, where's the value in that? They become dependent on someone else's technology w/c is similar to Yahoo licensing Google's search engine.
Maybe there is a business in developing pretty UIs...
DW
Aaron Patzer
· 2 years ago
A. Falk,
Sorry you ran into issues adding your accounts. We've deployed a ton of new hardware in the past 24 hours and things are speedy...you should be able to add your account in 30-120 seconds.
We ran into some scaling issues after we won TechCrunch 40, and were featured in PCWorld, Digg, and San Francisco Chronicle all on the same day. Literally 100,000 people really needed to get their finances organized on Tuesday. Apparently there _is_ a need for an effortless, automatic way to manage your finances.
If this amount of relatively small publicity, how do they expect to support the volume of users Quicken and MS Money have? Sounds like they did little to no scalibility testing. But given this is the Web 2.0 space, what else is new?
Ryan Rapp
· 2 years ago
Still no answer as far as Joe Shmo behind the scenes misusing my banking information.
A.Falk
· 2 years ago
Dear Aaron Patzer: I truly appreciate your response to my comment. And I immediately went back to mint.com tonight to give it another try. I was indeed able to add 1 (one) account - the other three show the same errors. Oh, and btw, you now owe me $35,977 which your site just promised I could save by switching to CapitalOne: http://www.xmlaficionado.com/2007/09/mint-pomis... Not a joke - I've posted actual screenshots and used my own actual credit card account.
Nick
· 2 years ago
Well, I was never able to add an account as a beta tester, and I STILL can't add any of my 4 banks, or 4 credit cards. I'm getting ready to abandon it all together.
@16 my guess is those 100k are basically tire kickers. Will be interesting to see how stckey they are after a month. I would't start extrapolating just yet.
mel
· 2 years ago
Great idea, but extremely flawed execution. I cannot add major institutions such as citibank, capitol one and American Express. I think that Mint should have stayed under the covers until they had more of these bugs worked out.
T
· 2 years ago
Guys common, dont you know bank of america has similar service on their online website? Its exactly the same data except for the tips that Mint gives you. I would be very wary to hand over my personal data to some startup, instead I would go to my bank and do the same thing.
Travis Choma
· 2 years ago
The only reason why this can work, is the low banking security that is used by US banks online. I'm in the Netherlands and this would never work because in order for me to login to my bank account online there is no username/password, rather I have an e-dentifer which is a handheld keypad which I insert my atm card. I then need to enter my atm card pin code in the e-dentifier in order to get into the e-dentifier. Then the website gives me a code to type in and the e-dentifier which responds with another code which I type into the website. So in order to login I need to use my atm card, know my atm pin, and do a security challenge with the e-dentifier.
Tom
· 2 years ago
I love the "high technology comment." High technology is launching shit out of the earth's orbit, guessing a tag is NOT high tech. Not to mention, I seriously doubt those patents will be granted, there's prior art all over the place.
aşk
· 1 year ago
marc & team are certainly smart guys & i'm sure they'll be successful, most especially with folks like you & fred & OATV behind them.
that said, i'm also confident there are other models for personal finance that can work quite well on the web. guess we'll find out ;)
aşk şiirleri
· 1 year ago
Well, I was never able to add an account as a beta tester, and I STILL can’t add any of my 4 banks, or 4 credit cards. I’m getting ready to abandon it all together
All Comments
Something seems really iffy about this concept. It scares me.
Amazing how easy the setup is and how easily understandable the data is presented.
The "Save Money" feature is worth a lot, literally!
Thanks for this interesting interview!
Cheers,
Yonga
Can they be allowed to do so?
$50K won't be enough for the litigation fees for infringing on Yodlee's data aggregation patents.
DW
Re the video itself: Aaron actually says that unlike Quicken, where adding a few accounts takes one hour, in Mint you can to it in 5 minutes. That's quite bold and completely untrue. Going to Mint today, this is the message I get for adding an account (that I've been trying to add for 3 days now):
Mint is currently experiencing delays adding accounts.
Your accounts will continue to process in the background. It may take up to an hour for your transactions and balances to come through.
Usually linking an account takes 30-90 seconds, but since winning TechCrunch40, and being featured in PCWorld, Digg, and San Francisco Chronicle our volume has gone up over 100x.
Quicken: 1 hour -- Mint: more than 3 days.
See also this post on my blog about their scalability issue:
http://www.xmlaficionado.com/2007/09/mint-not-r...
Maybe there is a business in developing pretty UIs...
DW
Sorry you ran into issues adding your accounts. We've deployed a ton of new hardware in the past 24 hours and things are speedy...you should be able to add your account in 30-120 seconds.
We ran into some scaling issues after we won TechCrunch 40, and were featured in PCWorld, Digg, and San Francisco Chronicle all on the same day. Literally 100,000 people really needed to get their finances organized on Tuesday. Apparently there _is_ a need for an effortless, automatic way to manage your finances.
Things are running smoothly now :)
Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com
support the volume of users Quicken and MS Money have? Sounds like they did little to no scalibility testing. But given this is the Web 2.0 space, what else is new?
I truly appreciate your response to my comment. And I immediately went back to mint.com tonight to give it another try. I was indeed able to add 1 (one) account - the other three show the same errors.
Oh, and btw, you now owe me $35,977 which your site just promised I could save by switching to CapitalOne:
http://www.xmlaficionado.com/2007/09/mint-pomis...
Not a joke - I've posted actual screenshots and used my own actual credit card account.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/21/reg40_l...
that said, i'm also confident there are other models for personal finance that can work quite well on the web. guess we'll find out ;)