Wall Street & Technology: Blog 
September 29, 2009
Citi, Microsoft Reportedly Forming Mint.com-Like Site
Bloomberg has reported that Citi and Microsoft are working together to build an online money management site like Mint.com, which recently agreed to be acquired by Intuit.
Mint.com lets users monitor their accounts at banks and brokerages and keep track of their spending and investing. The Citi/Microsoft version would do the same and is tentatively called Bundle, according to Bloomberg.
Citi recently shelved its myFi project, which was going to provide online investing for moderately wealthy brokerage clients. Microsoft ditched its Money personal finance website in June.
The Bloomberg article is posted on Microsoft's website and it has generated several comments from apparent former Microsoft Money users there.
Dominick said, "If Quicken gets my MSMoney file converted successfully I am onto Quicken and never looking back. MS lost me as a customer on the MSMoney cancellation."
RichT wrote: "What a crazy strategy first they abandon a large customer base of existing Money users, then they try to set up some new online system. Why would anybody trust Microsoft with their data? How do we know that after a few years, once they realize that they can't make money out of an online system, that they won't just abandon that too?"
Even a poster whose title suggested he works for Microsoft had a negative comment: "There is no way I'd consider signing up for another financial package of any sort with Microsoft, not after I've been using Money for 14 years and they just pull the plug to try something new."
In my view, you can't fault Citi for trying to create a Mint-like site to try to let customers track their online investments. Mint has 1.5 million users; there's clearly a demand for online investing that large brokerages will need to address if they want to have market share among "mass affluent" customers.
Posted by Penny Crosman at 09:29 AM
http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/blog/archives/2009/09/citi_microsoft.html;jsessionid=DE5A4W1UNEF31QE1GHOSKH4ATMY32JVN?cid=nl_wallstreettech_daily
This guy is crazy... CMA's are the new way of doing business... and this is a CMA platform for the masses.. who no longer trust Wall Street and / or the State run Pensions... and the larger safety net of larger Corporate Pensions is being blown out daily.. so the cloud mentality of gathering the masses money thru Microsoft (who did bend Citi over I am sure) and injecting into Citi... I like both better than I did before I read this..
Not that Microsoft is going anywhere.. ever... (yes thats a long time, I do understand what I just said).... But this tells me they are not asleep at the wheel..
Microsoft to Big to fail... coming in 100 years time... Kidding.. kind of.
I thought maybe someone would enjoy the info.. if its not for you sorry for you to have suffered reading the entire article and my drivel..
Be well, JW
