Like Jason, my question is about when will the service be available outside the US. Since I’m in Canada (close enough to the US), I’m wondering how long will it be before Mint is available to Cdn. consumers? I’m thinking there is hugh potential /opportunity to do this soon since some of the U.S. banks already have Cdn. connections or vice versa. For example, HSBC, ING, etc.

P.S. – Will be interesting to see how Mint stacks up against Quicken Online (a payment subscription service). And yes, they are going global and available in Canada.

I.e will look at the beta but I live in Auckland not SF.

It’s good to get a comment from down under!

What’s different about Mint? Well, the name first of all. Mint is going to be a fresh approach to personal finance and we’re going to help you not just know your money, but also grow your money.

We’re also providing a Web service, not desktop software, and its free! Beyond that, I’ll need to ask you to wait for our public beta to see for yourself if there are any differences relative to Quicken and Money.

On the one hand, all markets are hard to differentiate in and offer something unique. On the other hand, all markets are open to innovation and disruption if you provide something sharper with value and you can execute rapidly.

We’re quite comfortable with a business model that saves our members money. This is not simply a means to an end; it’s an intrinsic part of the service and the value that we offer to consumers.

As previously mentioned, your finances will be analyzed, but for your benefit only. Any results will be delivered only to you. And you can choose to remain completely anonymous on the service. Whether you decide to act on an offer is entirely up to you. Yes – advertisers will get good leads, but only if we make valuable offers to you and you choose to act on them.

With regard to your cell phone plan example, our job is to help you find a plan where you would spend less than $1,000/month. If you decide to investigate a related offer, an advertiser does not know that you spend anything until you decide to sign up for the new plan, which you’d only do if the offer makes sense.

As to the future and guarantees, I won’t go into that here, but I’d invite you to read our privacy and security policy in this regard when the service is available.

Aside from the merits of doing so, opting out of an offers algorithm that is designed to save you money might be one approach, but then we’d need to charge for the service and we’re determined to help consumers with their money, not to take more of it.

At heart, we’re consumer advocates. We’d like to see people move away from banks that pay no interest to those that pay 4-5%; away from credit cards offering no rewards to those paying up to 5% cash back on certain categories; away from that old expensive land line and to a lower-cost, higher quality provider. We just want people to save.

The national savings rate for people under 40 is negative; at Mint we’re out to change all that.

If you’d like to continue this conversation, please feel free to send an email to security@mint.com

Congratulations on the new role from Auckland. Some questions.

Trying to understand how Mint is different from other personal financial applications. Would be good to hear about differences over the usual suspects (Quicken & MS Money?)

Seems like a market where it is hard to differentiate or provide something unique.

Also will there be links to a SaaS style accounting platform for example?

Thanks for the prompt reply. I guess I still feel uncomfortable trading my financial information for a free personal finance tool if your business model is saving members money by exposing them to money saving promotions.

It seems like any savings distilled from your database would be useless unless you look deep into my finances and I doubt you can sell advertisers unless you make some promise that you are going to give them good leads.

What I mean, yes, it’s great you’re not going to hand over actual data to an advertiser but how can you give me an offer that doesn’t expose your intimate knowledge of my finances?

For example, if you know I spend $1,000/month on cell phone service and a deal is in your database for people who spend $1,000 or more on cell phone service it seems you have in fact passed on intimate knowledge of my finances if there is any way for the advertiser to connect the offer with Mint.

And what about the future?

You are venture finance backed and unless your terms and conditions do not allow for any change or modification (something I truly doubt) what guarantee can you make that some day down the road the terms will not be changed as part of a sale to someone who wants to mine that data?

I’m not saying that I would flat out not use your service but I think that every user should have the option to opt out of the algorithm, especially if this algorithm can put offers into my inbox for items that are not in my budget!