Intuit, the makers of TurboTax and Mint, is reportedly close to a deal to acquire personal-finance portal Credit Karma for a whopping $7 billion in a bid to strengthen its position in the consumer-finance market.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, talks began on Sunday which involve cash and stock. The acquisition could be completed as soon as today (to be confirmed).
From an affiliate perspective, Credit Karma operates in the fintech industry. The start-up, based in San Francisco, provides consumers with credit monitoring, free access to credit scores, data-breach alerts and tax-filing services. The company gets money via pitching credit cards and loans based on customers’ credit history.
In the report, Credit Karma previously considered selling shares to the public, but the IPO market has been marked by disappointing roll-outs more recently.
If the deal goes through, the acquisition will surpass PayPal’s recent purchase of browser extension platform Honey last November for $4 billion.
From Intuit’s perspective, the purchase of Credit Karma will no doubt strengthen their place in the financial market but also providing them access to a wider range of consumers and data as well — making them more appetising in the long run. A good example of this, mentioned in the New York Times, is Intuit matching all the tax data its TurboTax customers provide with the credit-scoring data that Credit Karma holds — leading to better customer prospects to credit card issuers, and eventually let Intuit charge lenders more for access to its hoard of data.