We start out the week with yet another blockbuster fintech acquisition. The Wall Street Journal reported late Saturday that Intuit, the maker of Quickbooks, TurboTax and Mint, is close to a deal to acquire Credit Karma for a reported $7 billion. The deal could be announced as soon as today when Intuit reports earnings after the closing bell. [Update: the deal is now official, here is the press release].

Under the deal Credit Karma would become an independent unit inside Intuit with CEO and co-founder, Ken Lin, remaining in charge. Credit Karma was last valued at around $4 billion two years ago and publicly traded Intuit is valued at around $77 billion. The $7 billion deal is expected to be a combination of cash and stock.

What This Deal Could Mean for Intuit and Credit Karma

Intuit has very strong offerings with Quickbooks for business and TurboTax for consumers. While the personal finance tool Mint was groundbreaking a decade ago it has been left to stagnate since Intuit acquired it back in 2009. There have been precious few new innovations in the past decade. This product also operates in a similar way to Credit Karma in that it makes money by recommending products such as credit cards and personal loans. But Credit Karma has done a far better job of this than Mint has ever done so Intuit clearly sees a lot of upside here. [Read more…]