Intuit is reportedly close to a $7 billion deal to acquire personal-finance portal Credit Karma and beef up its position in the consumer-finance market.
The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the talks, reported Sunday that a deal involving cash and stock could be announced as soon as Monday.
Intuit makes TurboTax. Buying Credit Karma would be the biggest acquisition in the company’s 37-year history. The Journal said privately held Credit Karma was valued at about $4 billion in a private share sale two years ago.
Credit Karma provides consumers with credit monitoring, free access to credit scores, data-breach alerts and tax-filing services. The company gets money by pitching credit cards and loans based on customers’ credit history.
Credit Karma is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2007 by Kenneth Lin, its current CEO and others. The Journal said the company considered selling shares to the public, but the IPO market has been marked by disappointing roll-outs more recently.
An Intuit purchase of Credit Karma would be merely the latest deal in the financial-services sector. Last week, investment bank Morgan Stanley announced it will buy online brokerage E-Trade Financial for about $13 billion in stock. In January, Visa said it was paying $5.3 billion for Plaid, which lets consumers to link bank accounts to financial-services apps like PayPal and Venmo. Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade are in the midst of their own merger.
