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Posted by Stewart Berman on February 23, 2008, 2:09 pm
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There are a number of banks that are looking at the fees they pay
Intuit vs the number and type of customer that uses Quicken. I
recently had HSBC cutoff my automatic downloads and when I checked
their web site they said it now required a monthly fee. (I couldn't
argue as it was a credit card I rarely used.) I suspect a lot more
FIs will starting looking at the fees Intuit charges vs the type of
customer using automatic downloading.
1. Take the Intuit fees and add the cost of maintaining the automatic
download interface plus a markup to cover the ROI that cost would
generate if invested elsewhere.
2. Divide by the number of Quicken users.
3. Analyze customer accounts to determine if they generate enough
revenue to justify waving the total cost of Quicken automatic
downloads. Start charging those that do not.
Banks have lots of fees that are waived for different levels of
customers. For example a minimum balance to have a no fee checking
account with interest on the balance.
I don't know what Intuit's fee schedule looks like but obviously a
number of banks are taking a look at it just as they do other "free"
services.
BTW, at some point they will begin to charge small customers for
downloading into Quicken from their web sites since Quicken charges
the banks a fee for that. Intuit can do that since they stopped
supporting QIF downloads which they could not charge the FIs for since
it was a public standard. The current download process goes through
Intuit's servers and must be licensed.
Microsoft is more constrained on what it can charge the FIs since it
has a smaller market share and it still supports standard file
downloads.
>My wife has a B of A account on which usually has 2 transaction per
>month plus a $9.95 fee. The transactions are 1 check and her Social
>Security deposit. I had been downloading them into Quicken which
>generated the fee. When I called about it they told me that there was
>no fee if I used Money, only Quicken. So I tried it on my trial Money
>and the download worked just fine. IMHO Quicken is not worth the
>additional $119 annual fee.
>
>Shorty
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