In the Spring issue of our Consulting Insights publication, we discussed the recent rise of a number of new, innovative online aggregation services. There, and more recently in this blog post, we highlighted Mint.com as a leader in providing valuable, customer-friendly personal financial management (PFM) tools and advice. Apparently PFM software giant Intuit saw significant value in Mint as well, acquiring the firm for an impressive $170 million in a recently-confirmed deal.

Understandably, the move is considered a win for Mint. As a free service, the start-up had to deal with an unsteady income stream from sales of aggregate data and honorariums for its account recommendations. The $170 million valuation seems very favorable for a new company whose business model had not yet proven sustainable.

Many Mint users have expressed their concerns about the deal across the blogosphere. So far, Mint’s press release and blog post (which the firm emailed in an announcement to users) have done their best to assure users that the service will continue to be run as normal and (crucially) remain free. CEO Aaron Patzer will take over Intuit’s personal finance group, which will oversee Mint as well as Quicken. Also staying on is “the Mint.com team,” who promise to continue developing the platform’s services as they have in the two years since its launch.

It also appears that Quicken Online, Intuit’s own free online aggregation service, will remain in operation. While it rivaled Mint in terms of user base, its functionality was considerably less robust. Intuit believes that Quicken Online still fills a niche, “connect[ing] customers across desktop, online and mobile platforms,” as per the Wall Street Journal article on the deal. However, it would have to expand on its limited capabilities connecting to desktop versions of Quicken to achieve that goal and offer useful features that Mint lacks.

As the spate of articles and blog posts reporting on this deal shows, account aggregation continues to generate a great deal of interest online. Usually, aggregation services make headlines for such innovations as tying social media into personal financial management. It remains to be seen how the Mint-Intuit partnership will impact users. However, the implications for the industry could be far-reaching.

Our original article identified a few other popular third-party aggregation services to watch, such as Wesabe, Geezeo and Cake Financial. Mint’s sale to Intuit will likely put increased pressure on those firms to find a business model - or buyer - that will allow them to compete with the combined Mint-Intuit (and let their venture capitalists and/or founders cash out). While we’re not sure that any financial institution would step up to the plate to buy one of these aggregators, a major financial portal like Yahoo! Finance or Microsoft Money might benefit from a partnership with one of these firms.