May 18 (Bloomberg) -- Mint Software Inc., an online service that helps consumers track every dime they spend, has a goal for its own pocketbook: boosting sales as much as 10-fold this year.

To fuel revenue, the company may start charging for access to anonymous data, Chief Executive Officer Aaron Patzer said. The company’s site, Mint.com, monitors everything from bank balances and credit cards to 401(k)s. That could give valuable insight into consumer spending and the economy, he said.

“If Mint has a record of everything people have spent in the past and the record of what they want to spend in the future, that’s a pretty damn good position to be in,” Patzer, 28, said in a May 6 interview. Mint doesn’t track the identities of its users, so there’s no danger of personal data being revealed, he said.

As consumers cope with the recession by cutting spending, new information could help Wall Street traders, ad agencies and buyout firms find pockets of growth. Mint.com, with detailed spending information from about 1.1 million users, aims to open a window into the sales of specific companies and industries.

The challenge for Mint is that other services, such as MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse, already offer similar data, said Marc DeCastro, an analyst at Framingham, Massachusetts- based research firm IDC. That could limit the amount companies are willing to pay for Mint’s information, he said. Mint also may have to deal with consumers’ privacy concerns.

Bad Impression?

“The danger is if clients feel their spending habits are being monitored and being shared with the highest bidder they would probably shy away from these types of services,” DeCastro said.

Mint doesn’t store names or account numbers and wouldn’t share information about individual transactions, Patzer said. “Privacy and security are absolutely paramount,” he said.

The company competes with personal-finance sites such as Intuit Inc.’s Quicken, which is used in about 12 million homes, as well as Wesabe Inc. and Rudder Inc. About 68 percent of Mint’s users are men, with a median age of 30, Patzer said.

When a Mint subscriber buys a latte at Starbucks Corp. or a movie ticket at a United Artists, the transactions automatically get categorized on the Web site -- say, under food or entertainment. Users can even compare how much they spend at Starbucks or United Artists or other chains, versus other people nationwide. This gives anyone on Mint an exclusive view of how sales at certain stores are faring.

Making Recommendations

For now, Mint makes money by recommending credit cards, bank accounts and brokerages. Users click on a “Ways to Save” tab to compare their interest rates to others available. Financial institutions compensate Mint when its customers sign up for accounts.

Mint works with about 40 banks, which pay the company $35 when a user opens a savings account. Brokerages give Mint a commission of about $70, while firms managing individual retirement accounts offer about $200.

“We make money if we can find you a better financial product,” Patzer said. The business of generating leads for financial services may be worth about $4 billion, he said.

Mint.com, based in Mountain View, California, started in September 2007. The company has raised about $20 million in venture capital from Shasta Ventures, Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital, and early Google Inc. investors Ram Shriram and Ron Conway.

Mint more than doubled its revenue in the first quarter from the previous three months, Patzer said. He declined to give specific figures or say if the closely held company is profitable.

Rudder’s Plans

Rudder, the rival personal-finance site, is also considering selling data about its users’ spending, CEO Nikhil Roy said.

“It’s definitely on the table,” Roy said. “We just have to see where the ethical boundaries are with that from our users’ perspective and make sure it’s anonymous data that’s going out.”

Other companies, such as Quicken, won’t sell data out of concern that they’ll alienate customers.

“We’ve worked hard for more than 25 years to build consumer trust in our brand,” Chelsea Marti, an Intuit spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Mint’s data would be useful to a number of businesses wanting to track spending trends, said Tod Francis, managing director at Menlo Park, California-based Shasta. For example, Mint’s data could indicate shifts in consumer tastes, or whether people are shopping at particular stores.

“There are traders, private-equity people and all sorts of people who want certain types of information,” Francis said. “We have insight into all that information. It could be very powerful.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Joseph Galante in San Francisco at jgalante3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 18, 2009 11:54 EDT