On the wires:

• Guardian Analytics Secures $11 Million in Financing
• RedFin Network Releases P25-M Printer for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

On the web:

• Wall Street Journal: U.S. Card Companies Shrug at China's Monopoly
• ReadWriteWeb: Bundle - Helping Consumers with Data from Twenty Million Credit Cards
• New York Times: Credit Card Data Tells Mixed Story
• TechCrunch: Cardpool Launches One Gift Card To Rule Them All
• ZDNet: Facebook Credits - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

A recent study conducted by Fiserv shows that consumers are very interested in personal financial management (PFM) tools. But, while interest in PFM is high, actual usage remains quite low.

Nearly 40%of the consumers surveyed indicated that PFM tools would be beneficial to managing their finances, yet only 15% of consumers had used a PFM service in the past 90 days. Of the subset of respondents who had used a PFM service in the past 90 days, an overwhelming majority said they did so from online banking sites (68%), more than double the percentage that reported using the top named traditional personal financial management software.

HelloWallet, a personal finance website dedicated to helping people reach their financial goals, has announced closing $3.6 million in Series A funding, led by Grotech Ventures along with an investment by Jean and Steve Case. The company, which launched in March 2010, provides its service through partnerships with companies and other organizations that employ or serve more than 3.5 million people. READ MORE »

Wesabe has announced the launched of GetSpringboard.com, "a personal finance management (PFM) platform that is available via a cloud-based services model for financial institutions that want award-winning personal finance management tools without the engineering requirements of hosting the platform in-house."

Wesabe CEO Marc Hedlund notes that Wesabe is offering "a new model for deploying banking software. Instead of going back and forth for weeks (or months) with a salesperson to get a quote, and then spending months with consultants charging for "integration," our new site lets banks and credit unions see pricing, sign up, launch, configure, and control their sites all over the web. We've had people deploy a full PFM suite for their site in under 10 minutes. We think this is a new way to get and deploy banking software, more akin to Salesforce.com or 37signals.com than to traditional banking software."

MasterCard Worldwide has announced the launch of MasterCard Money Manager™ - calling it "a new, interactive financial management tool that enables MasterCard cardholders to quickly and efficiently monitor debit card spending for themselves and members of their household. Using the web-based tool, consumers have the ability to review signature and PIN-based MasterCard transactions by merchant category, and create customized categories, making it easy to identify spending patterns and compare actual spend to an allocated budget." READ MORE »

Yodlee is previewing Yodlee 10, its next-generation, personalized finance platform today at the Finovate event in New York City. As the solutions provider for more than 85% of all online PFM users today, Yodlee is helping banks and portals move PFM to the center of online finance, deepening customer relationships and driving new revenue. READ MORE »

Mint.com has announced raising $14 million in a Series C financing round led by DAG Ventures. The company described the financing as "a preemptive round, with new participation from The Founder's Fund, and investment from existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and Sherpalo. Valuation is not being disclosed, but it represents a significant up round." READ MORE »

Mint.com has launched MintLife, an expanded, magazine-style online publication that "will deliver more in-depth features and advice to help its more than 300,000 monthly visitors better manage their money and more knowledgably navigate the current, difficult economy. Expanded content, increased interactivity, data-driven infographics and direct access to celebrity sources will enhance the award-winning value of the Mint.com money management and budgeting tools, furthering Mint.com on its mission to help Americans save and do more with their money." READ MORE »

Yodlee has announced that usage of Yodlee-powered PFM solutions nearly doubled to more than 17 million Personal Finance Management (PFM) users worldwide. According to Yodlee, its PFM solutions are "currently used by 6 of the top 10 U.S. banks, more than 100 leading financial institutions around the world and the most successful non-bank PFM portals." READ MORE »

After 17 years in the personal financial management software business, Microsoft has announced that it is withdrawing from that market:

With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009.

More details here.

Wesabe has announced that Delta Community Credit Union, the largest credit union in Georgia, is its charter Wesabe Springboard customer. Using Wesabe's Springboard offering, Delta Community Credit Union will have full access to Wesabe's suite of applications, including account management, goal setting/tracking, community forums, widgets, and merchant tips and comparisons. READ MORE »

San Francisc-based GoalSpring has announced a major milestone following the December 2008 alpha launch of DebtGoal.com by passing the $100 million mark of consumer debt enrolled in its service. DebtGoal.com is "an easy-to-use, free online tool helping consumers with debt to create and manage a plan to pay it down." GoalSpring says it was founded out of a desire to break the mold of previous financial services companies that push products rather than help people achieve goals. READ MORE »

Social personal finance website Wesabe has announced the launch of Wesabe SpringBoard - making available a web-services-based version of its money management tools and community features to banks and credit unions. READ MORE »

Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer has posted a guest column on TechCrunch in which he shares some of the aggregate data that Mint.com has captured from its users sharing their spending data.

Looking across spending as a whole in 2008, we can see a phase change beginning in the summer. After a bump in the May/June time frame from tax refunds and credits, we see spending declined by $400 / month / household. Spending eroded even further (a $200 drop) in November along with consumer confidence, bouncing back only slightly for the holidays.

Mint.com has just released a free application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Here's the link to the app in the iTunes App Store. Kevin Purdy also reviews the new Mint app on Lifehacker.

Speaking of the iPhone, Stanford has made available the course materials from its CS193P iPhone Application Programming course - free. 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.

In a new report titled "The Impact of Online Personal Finance Offering: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", TowerGroup analyst George Tubin finds the capabilities of new non-bank online personal finance web sites are of interest but raises concerns about whether the sites have "adequate fraud prevention capabilities to protect both the consumer and the bank from account takeover and identity theft." READ MORE »

Yodlee and Postilion have announced a 'partnership to integrate Yodlee PersonalFinance and Yodlee DirectPay into Postilion's Retail and Business Internet Banking solutions to enable Postilion's' financial institution customers to deliver stronger online banking solutions and develop new revenue-generating opportunities via card-based online bill payment.' READ MORE »

In an article titled 'Tracking Your Money Without Paying a Mint', Katherine Boehret writes for the Wall Street Journal about Mint.com, one of the companies presenting at yesterday's Finovate Startup conference in San Francisco. She says 'Mint was created for 20-somethings like me who want to pay more attention to their finances but aren't interested in taking hours each week to do so. This Web site worked ideally for me, and its clean interface integrates Web 2.0 features in a way that makes it a pleasure to use.'

Aite Group has published a new report titled 'Usage Trends in Online and Mobile Banking: Upping the Ante' finding that reviews consumer adoption trends for online and mobile banking services over the next two years. READ MORE »

Social personal finance website Wesabe has announced the launch of a new "Tips" feature that provides members with customized, side-by-side comparisons of competing businesses across a number of data points. Wesabe says that 'Tips gives members financial power by arming them with the most comprehensive mix of purchase behavior data, consumer satisfaction ratings and advice.' READ MORE »

Social personal finance website Wesabe has announced the launch of an automated "add your bank" feature, allowing Wesabe's members to immediately add their financial institutions and upload data. During the sign-up process, if a new member's bank or credit union isn't one of the nearly 5,000 currently supported by Wesabe, they can add it to the database in less than a minute and begin uploading data. Wesabe's Marc Hedlund blogs about the new feature.

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.

Wesabe has announced the release of Wesabe Mobile, a free, secure banking platform for mobile devices, that "lets members use any web-enabled cell phone or PDA to monitor their account balances and recent transactions for thousands of banks and credit cards worldwide. Wesabe Mobile also provides members with an easy way to record and track where they are spending cash."

Glenbrook's Bryan Derman filed the following report tonight from today's Finovate 1.0 Conference in New York City.

Calling itself "the freshest, most intelligent way for you to manage your money online.", Mint.com, a new web-based approach to personal financial management, has officially launched. Mint says it "automatically pulls together the user’s bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up-to-date and amazingly accurate views of his or her !nancial life - from the big picture to speci!c details, in a friendly and intuitive user interface."

In a post titled "Following your money in Facebook", Colin Smillie blogs on his Inside Facebook blog about the personal financial management applications on Facebook - including BillMonk and Lending Club. He notes that "many developers have been clamoring for Facebook to launch a payment system fully integrated with the Platform soon."

Obopay's BillMonk has introduced what they call "debt shuffling" - but it's really all about computing a net settlement position for social debts owed to a network of friends.

Carolyn Y. Johnson writes for the Boston Globe about social networking sites and how they're beginning to offer financial advice. Johnson notes that "the tools that people use to connect with their peers and share information on websites like Facebook, Del.icio.us, or Wikipedia can help people save money or make smarter purchases." She quotes Wesabe's Jason Knight: "Social finance is a way for consumers to find out if there's real value where they're spending money. . . . It's absolutely critical in rebalancing the power between consumers and marketers."

Buxfer, an online money tracking service, has announced they will be using Amazon's new Flexible Payment Service to make online payments between users in the US - and they're offering it free of charge (certain limitations) through the end of August. Going forward, Buxfer will be charging the receiver of funds for the payment by passing through the fees Amazon charges them for FPS. Buxfer only supports payments funded from the sender's Amazon Payments account balance or from the sender's bank account - but not from a sender's credit card (presumably because Amazon FPS, like PayPal, does not support personal account holders receiving credit card payments). See their blog post here. Jim Bruene also reports on Buxfer on his Netbanker blog.