Intuit has announced TurboTax for Online Banking, "a new offering designed to help financial institutions bring more value to customers – and increase deposits – by turning their online banking site into a valuable tax resource." Available for Digital Insight financial institutions to offer in the upcoming tax season, TurboTax for Online Banking won a Best of Show award at Finovate 2009, a conference showcasing the best new innovations in financial and banking technology. READ MORE

Intuit held its Annual Investor Day today - the presentation slides and a webcast of the event are available online.

Intuit has soft-launched a new Intuit PaymentNetwork, calling it a "new and affordable way to send and receive payments over the Internet" for individuals and small businesses." A comprehensive set of help and support Q&A is available online.

For small businesses, the Intuit PaymentNetwork provides a low-cost payment alternative to credit cards for receiving payments - charging 50 cents per payment received irregardless of the amount (subject to certain limits). There are no monthly charges, equipment or set-up costs.

For individuals sending funds, you can send to anyone who is a member of the Intuit PaymentNetwork. If they're not already a member, they can join to receive their funds. At the present time, individuals can't receive funds.

More details available on the Intuit Small Business United blog.

Intuit has announced that its Intuit GoPayment application - providing the ability to process credit card payments using an iPhone or iPod touch - is now available on the iTunes App Store. According to Intuit, "the free download turns iPhone or iPod touch into an affordable and hassle-free credit card terminal." READ MORE

Intuit has announced that Intuit GoPayment, a new way for business owners to process credit cards on their mobile phones, is the first small business application available for the new Palm Pre phone. According to the company, "GoPayment helps improve cash flow by giving small businesses an affordable and hassle-free way to process credit card payments outside the office as soon as the job is done." READ MORE

Andera has announced that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Digital Insight, an Intuit company and an outsourced provider of online banking and financial management capabilities to banks and credit unions in the United States. This agreement enables Digital Insight to provide Andera’s online account opening and funding solutions to its client financial institutions. READ MORE

Earlier this year, Intuit "soft launched" its new GoPayment mobile card acceptance solution for merchants. Yesterday, Intuit officially announced the new service - "GoPayment helps small businesses improve sales and cash flow by using their mobile phones to accept credit card payments. GoPayment is affordable and hassle-free. All that’s needed is a mobile phone with access to the mobile Web, or the easy-to-download GoPayment application, and an Intuit GoPayment merchant account." READ MORE

Intuit has introduced Intuit GoPayment - saying it "enables business owners to accept credit and signature debit card payments using their mobile phone and a QuickBooks Merchant Services Account." The new service supports an optional Bluetooth mag stripe reader or reader/receipt printer along with Quickbooks integration of the payments processed.

Digital Insight, the financial institutions division of Intuit, has delivered Small Business FinanceWorks™ to help financial insitutions acquire low cost small business deposits and sustain a competitive advantage by offering an online hub for their small business customers.

"Small Business FinanceWorks is a new online financial management tool that small businesses can access through the online banking site of their local financial institution. By offering Small Business FinanceWorks to their customers, banks and credit unions now have the unique opportunity to attract new small business customers, strengthen existing relationships and gain a competitive advantage." READ MORE

Intuit's Digital Insight unit has announced the availability of its FinanceWorks online financial management solutions for banks that "makes it possible for consumers to manage accounts across more than 5,000 financial institutions and credit card sites, ensure bills are paid on time regardless of the method they use to pay them, and see where their money is going, including future transactions. All this within the financial institution’s Web site." READ MORE

Earlier this week, Intuit held its annual investor day to review its growth strategies. The presentation slides are available online along with an accompanying webcast.

Vindicia has announced that it has been selected by Intuit to enable the new Intuit Partner Platform and associated solutions marketplace.

Separately, Vindicia also announced that several gaming publishers (Cryptic, FireSky, Multiverse and Outspark) are using Vindicia's billing and fraud management solutions. READ MORE

Jim Bruene takes a look at Intuit's recently introduced Quicken Beam service - "the free service sends users text messages balance and activity alerts from most U.S. bank, credit card, and credit union accounts." Here's the press release introducing the service. Quicken Beam is one of the first services introduced by Intuit Labs.

Intuit has announced the availability of Quicken Online – calling it "a new Web-based service that makes it easy for people to instantly see how much money they have coming in, how much they are spending, and what’s left at the end of the month." In terms of mobile banking features, Quicken Online includes an interface optimized for the Apple iPhone along with alerts sent via SMS, etc.

Intuit and Electronic Clearing House have announced they have "signed a definitive agreement for Intuit to acquire ECHO. Under the terms of the agreement, Intuit will pay $17 per share in cash in exchange for each share of ECHO common stock, including shares issuable upon exercise of options. The total purchase price is approximately $131 million on a fully diluted basis."

Digital Insight has announced that "more than 60 leading financial institutions have selected Digital Insight’s consumer Internet Banking solution since the online banking company was acquired by Intuit in February 2007. In addition, more than 8 million people, or approximately 10 percent of all online banking users in the United States, actively use Digital Insight’s consumer solution through its nearly 1,800 financial institution clients."

Following its acquisition of Digital Insight by Intuit five weeks ago, they've announced Personal FinanceWorks and Small Business FinanceWorks - saying these two products are "expected to lead the next generation of online banking."

Damon Darlin interviews Intuit CEO Steve Bennett who says Intuit's "vision is our online software as a service suite that integrates all the data flow that makes it one place for small business to do online banking, bill payment and customer management."

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson had been initially skeptical about Intuit's recent announcement to acquire Digital Insight - as she says "after all, banks have had a long and somewhat rocky road with Intuit over the years and some seem to still have very mixed feelings about their basic value proposition." But Carol has recently become convinced that the new Intuit/Digital Insight business combination could provide some very real value to a bank's small business customers.

Intuit and Electronic Clearing House Inc. have announced signing of a definitive agreement for Intuit to acquire ECHO for a total purchase price is approximately $142 million on a fully-diluted basis.

Intuit and Digital Insight have announced signing a definitive agreement for Intuit to acquire Digital Insight. According to the two companies, "the acquisition will bring together Digital Insight, a leading provider of online banking services, and Intuit, the leading provider of financial management software, to millions of small businesses and consumers."

Intuit has announced a new suite of software applications that the company says "will help financial institutions win new online customers by simplifying the online account opening process."

Intuit held an Analyst Day yesterday. Of particular interest is the Small Business presentation given by Senior Vice President Brad Smith which includes some great insights into the small business market in the US along with Intuit's success with its Innovative Merchant Solutions merchant card acquiring business.

Intuit and Google have announced a strategic alliance "designed to help millions of small businesses promote themselves online using a variety of popular Google services built into most QuickBooks 2007 products." Separately, Intuit announced that it has acquired StepUp Commerce, a San Francisco-based provider of services that "enable local businesses to convert online shoppers into in-store customers", and that StepUp's technology platform will power the new QuickBooks Product Listing Service that is part of its Google alliance.

Homestead Technologies and Intuit have announced the integration of Intuit's QuickBooks Merchant Service for Web Stores with Homestead's Storefront ecommerce solution for small business, enablng small business owners to accept credit card payments online with a QuickBooks Merchant Service account and to synchronize this data along with key business data from the Web store directly with QuickBooks.

Intuit has announced a new simplified credit card processing solution designed for small businesses that don't need a full accounting package or a high end merchant account service. The QuickBooks Credit Card Processing Kit, priced at $39.95, delivers credit card processing for small businesses handling less than $5,000 in credit card transactions each month.

Intuit held its annual Investor Day yesterday. Jill Ward's Quickbooks-Related presentation (PDF) includes a discussion of Intuit's card merchant acquiring activities. Scott Cook's presentation on Intuit's Customer Driven Innovation process also makes interesting reading.

Intuit announced today that it is acquiring Innovative Merchant Solutions, a Calabasas, Calif.-based provider of credit and debit card processing services for small businesses. Intuit said it is paying $116 MM to acquire the company which had net revenues in 2002 of $25 MM. READ MORE