Mint Updates Mobile App with Spending Trend Data

Mint, the personal financial management tool that inspired copy-cat entrepreneurs around the world, updated its mobile app Monday to include Trends, a feature that lets people view transaction data by category, merchant, account, date or tags. The Mint app update for iOS devices also includes a new design and lets people edit transactions.

Since Mint's initial debut, the tool now owned by Intuit has inspired plenty of startups angling to offer a new take on PFM for the mobile-only customer. Many such entrepreneurs are designing software meant to help people shop smarter, and sometimes save more. Some young companies like Check (formerly known as PageOnce), which also built its own account aggregation technology, let people transact through the app. Most PFM apps let users pull in outside accounts into a single view by partnering with Intuit or Yodlee. A few services offer forecasts of what a person will buy. People "pay" for the services by letting a company see their personal financial information, and receiving product pitches based on their spending patterns. These apps all share one problem: the inevitable data inaccuracies that require manual work on the user's part to fix.

Meanwhile, bankers wonder what PFM services they should offer on a device with limited real estate that's used on the go. To date, the ability to set up alerts is one slice of PFM available to banks' mobile customers.

Intuit sold Digital Insight, its technology arm that offers solutions to banks, to Thoma Bravo earlier this year.