Mint Shows Consumer Finance + Social Work Together (and Make Money)

Despite the naysayers, Mint and its classmates have exploded over the past few weeks -- proving that customers will share data about their habits and spending, especially if they believe doing so will help them save money.

Think about them as contenders to take over the space owned by Quicken, Bankrate, and others.

Mint, Wesabe and Geezeo. Each are social consumer finance websites which are based on the idea that sharing data about personal finance and spending is valuable the the group, anonymously or otherwise. From there they each differ in approach:

Mint:

- Upload your bank and loan accounts
- See where your money goes
- Compare your spending and your interest rates to others.
- Get recommendations for better interest rates or other ways to save on monthly bills(utilities, etc.)

Geezeo:

-Upload your bank and loan accounts, (including investments, mortgages and student loans, unlike the others).
-See where your money goes
-Get updates via text messages
-Allows users to tag spending and join or add discussion about the tagged topic.


Wesabe:

- Upload your bank and loan accounts
- See where your money goes
-Allows users to tag spending and join or add discussion about the tagged topic.
- Share and support financial goals


Where Wesabe is more robustly social, and Geezeo has the most best support for including accounts, Mint wins the day easily by giving consumers just what they are looking for, clear actionable suggestions (offers) that point out where they are paying too much, and what alternatives they have to save money. If they can keep up their new sign-up rate, reported at 1 every 5 minutes that these sponsored offers will enable Mint, to make a mint.

Not without obstacles, the process of adding accounts is still cumbersome and at least moderately annoying. For me Mint's business model is vulnerable due to the fact that its recommendations (Mint Offers) are not organic and unbiased, they are paid advertisements. Finally, security of personal data is the greatest wild card, as each of these startups are a hacker's dream. Regardless, the promise to the consumer is strong enough that it seems initially that consumers are already willing to these startups with their most sensitive financial data.