Ultimately these plays will be about who owns the customer relationship – the closer you are to products and to key functionality, the better your chances of creating meaningful value will be. I am a big fan of what the guys at Mint.com are doing, but nothing they've built is critical in the way a checking account is. And all the analytical tools in the world can't close that gap absent some other kind of “critical” service. It will be very fun to watch this space develop.

re: Yodlee's valuation, as Chris mentioned, the previous round essentially wiped the slate clean. It would be somewhat surprising if this round was down (given that the business seems to be performing decently well) but I seem to recall that the last one was. The last time I heard Anil speak in a meeting (nearly two years ago) he was convinced he had a $bn+ company on his hands – I certainly hope he gets there.

I tend to be more suspicious of motives when companies -do- talk about their valuation.

I also don't think Yodlee will decide to compete directly, as it were. That's up to the banks. I think there -is- a little built-in arrogance in the web developer group (not to mention my own group, web media) that the old guard — established industry — will never figure out the game. That's not true; it just takes time, and the banks are in a much better position to grow the market. They start out with the users. All they have to do is not lose them. And for the most part, the independent sites don't have a lot of traction yet.. even Mint is pretty small, comparatively.

Of course, there are also investment services to look at. If anything, it seems more likely that one of them might want to acquire a Mint or Geezeo outright. Makes plenty of sense for their customers.

i have been a Yodlee user for over 5years. both services are useful, altho Mint now provides a well-designed front-end & additional services such as saving suggestions & other spending tips & reports, in addition to those it gets via its partnership with Yodlee.

UI & other bells & whistles aside, should Yodlee decide to enter the fray directly, my guess is that Mint would likely become a very interesting acquisition target by any of the larger financial service providers (Intuit, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay/PayPal, or Google).

so while there could be competition ahead, there is probably also likely consolidation due to the potential for the category, applied to larger user audiences.

(or at least as an investor, that would be my optimistic take on this scenario… more likely tho, Mint & other startups just end up being more nimble than the larger players, and therefore more & more attractive down the road)