
Intuit plans to buy Credit Karma for $7B - abawany
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/business/dealbook/credit-karma-intuit-deal.html
======
Deimorz
Discussed yesterday on the original article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396937)

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theuri
Three words that explain Intuit's rationale: "Free tax returns".

They are stopping a potentially existential threat to Intuit's TurboTax cash
cow.

[https://www.creditkarma.com/tax/](https://www.creditkarma.com/tax/)

~~~
ryanmercer
TurboTax is 100% free for State and Fed for _many_ people (probably several
tens of percent of the country), anyone with a simple tax return. I use it
every year to file for free for both. They try and make money by selling you
audit protection, trying to get you to put your refund on their debit card,
etc.

I'm not seeing how this is much of an argument for them to buy CreditKarma.

The argument for them to buy it is they then get:

\- access to all of that credit report information

\- access to the savings account customers

\- the linked car and driver information

\- more free tax customers to try and upsell audit protection and to try and
push returns on their debit card to

\- mortgage and other loan shopping data from everyone that's used the
mortgage comparison

\- potentially as much as 13 years of weekly credit data on given individuals

etc.

~~~
jedberg
TurboTax was sued for making it impossible to find their legally mandated free
filing product. While many people qualified, they tricked most of them into
paying for their paid product unnecessarily.

Just this year they were ordered to make that products slightly easier to
find, but they can still do most of their tricks to direct people away from
it.

Credit Karma is an existential threat because it makes free filing easy to
find.

I suspect after this deal completes, the CK free file product will start
having all the same dark patterns and TurboTax's free product.

~~~
ryanmercer
>TurboTax was sued for making it impossible to find their legally mandated
free filing product

And Googling "turbotax free" brings the page right up as the top ad return and
as the first search result.

~~~
jedberg
Now it does. That was part of the lawsuit. That before, when you googled
[turbotax free], it took you to their paid product.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
If you have a startup with lots of users, but can't figure out how to
monetize, I think a good plan is to develop an easy to use tax filing service
and offer it for free to your users.

~~~
Kirby64
Honestly, this seems like what they did. Mint already seems to align with a
lot of what CreditKarma does. The tax stuff was just a monetary incentive for
Intuit to buy them out.

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abawany
My take on the article was that the combination of their tax data, the
financial data from their prior acquisition of Mint , and with the tax+credit
data that will come with this acquisition Intuit would have one of the highest
quality financial profiles on most individuals. I am trying to think of any
other financial entity that has such data and I am drawing a blank atm.

PS: I never used Credit Karma but had been considering it though I could never
get past the 'if it is free, then you are the product'.

~~~
TurkTurkleton
Credit Karma was/is pretty open about the way in which you are the product,
though: they show you ads for credit cards and loans that you are likely to be
approved for, based on your credit information which they already have.

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sixQuarks
welp, I'm gonna stop using Credit Karma now. Thanks a lot intuit

~~~
mttjj
Yep. I deleted my account as soon as I heard the news yesterday. Thankfully
you can delete your account online and don't have to email/call anyone.

~~~
volkk
are there any alternatives that are similar to creditkarma where i can really
monitor my credit score

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ulkesh
This is terrible news for consumers and tax payers in the United States. I was
considering filing this year with Credit Karma because it is free. TurboTax
can offer a free filing all they like, but 1) it's very limited; 2) last I
checked, state filing still cost money; and 3) they inundate you on every
other page about paying for some level of filing.

Since the new tax laws went into effect, I've had to pay each year (on the
order of thousands more, than what I had to pay during the Obama years). That
plus having to pay to file (or having to learn all of the forms and do it
myself) is quite the stab in the back for a middle-class consumer like myself.

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timw4mail
Of course the best solution would be bought out by the worst competitor...

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anderber
Well this is unfortunate, I wanted to use Credit Karma free tax software
because I have TurboTax and their practices.

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sparkywolf
I used Credit Karma tax this year and was pleasantly surprised to find how
great and frictionless the experience was.

figures.

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joshdance
Someone needs to start developing the next version of Credit Karma right now.

It is going to stagnate just like Mint. :(

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cityzen
Is this another company that took over $800 million in VC and can't seem to
figure out how to make money? And the founders and VCs get a big payout,
Intuit gets a big data payout and all the losers that took credit karma at
their word are SOL?

Sounds awesome. Pro tip... maybe startups should try starting conventional
businesses that actually make money?

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lern_too_spel
Why should startups take your advice? It sounds like they made money by not
following it.

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cityzen
And they're selling out to intuit why?

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Sohcahtoa82
Money is money.

Whether the money is coming from customers or from a larger company buying
them out, the CEO of CK walks away with a ton of cash.

~~~
cityzen
yay money.

