4/29/14 11:00 PM ET (Dow Jones)
By Douglas MacMillan Intuit Inc. is in talks to acquire bill-payment service Check Inc. for more than $350 million, according to two people familiar the situation.
The discussions are still early and a final agreement may not be reached for two or more weeks, one of the people said.
Check would become the latest tech startup snapped up by Intuit as the finance-software maker expands its suite of tools for individuals and small businesses through acquisitions. Last year, the company bought document service DocStoc, tax-return helper GoodApril and small-business scheduling tool FullSlate.
Check's smartphone app is used by more than 10 million people to track and pay bills. The service has some of the same functions as Mint, the person-finance software maker Intuit bought for $170 million in 2009. Intuit also owns personal-finance software Quicken and TurboTax.
Check, based in Palo Alto, Calif., makes money from advertisers who offer promotions for credit cards or insurance within the app. This year, Check expects revenue of more than $20 million, up from less than $15 million last year, said the person familiar with the company.
A sale to Intuit, of Mountain View, Calif., would culminate a seven-year journey for Check Chief Executive Guy Goldstein, who co-founded the startup in 2007 as Pageonce, a service for managing bank accounts, social-networking profiles, shopping carts and other Internet profiles in one place. Last year, the company changed its name to Check and narrowed its focus to helping users track their personal finances and pay bills using their mobile phones.
Mr. Goldstein didn't respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Intuit declined to comment on potential deals.
The small startup faces increasing competition in mobile payments, an emerging field where giants including Apple Inc., Google Inc. and eBay Inc.'s PayPal division are bulking up as they attempt to win over users and merchants.
Check has raised around $47 million from venture-capital firms including Morgenthaler Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Israeli investor Pitango Venture Capital.
Evelyn M. Rusli contributed to this article.
Write to Douglas MacMillan at douglas.macmillan@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 29, 2014 23:00 ET (03:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment