“Every startup becomes a bank and every tech company does the same…”
Intuit owns TurboTax, which is and isn’t free for filing US tax forms.
It announced it’ll acquire Credit Karma, a personal-finance startup, whose Tax offering is 100% free.
Recently (late 2019):
Credit Karma, which has amassed 100 million users to date, has acquired a five-person company to build out its savings app: Haven Money. (source.
…
“The industry of neobanks is trying to do a lot of different things,” he said. “I don’t intend for us to ever become a bank. But we still operate in a highly regulated financial industry.” This is the company’s seventh acquisition to date.Haven Money helps users manage their savings for investing and retirement using proprietary technology and algorithms. Per its website, Haven will no longer be available after December 15, 2019. After that. “any money still in Haven will be returned to its original source account,” the website says. Users were told to withdraw money before this date.
This is funny (CrunchBase):
As every startup becomes a bank and every tech company does the same, one 12-year-old company that is already in the fintech space isn’t joining the growing crowd…
TurboTax is an American tax preparation software package developed by Michael A. Chipman of Chipsoft in the mid-1980s. Intuit acquired Chipsoft, based in San Diego, in 1993. TurboTax for the Mac was originally named MacinTax, and was developed by SoftView. SoftView was in turn purchased by Chipsoft. Wikipedia
(Related: On building fintechs in 2020 - Andreessen Horowitz - #4 by engineer)