Intuit opens up TurboTax service to developers, starting with online lender Earnest

Intuit is making another effort to help people save money with a new offering that benefits third-party applications. Today, the financial service provider announced that it has opened up its platform, allowing developers to build connections with its popular TurboTax Online service. The first to partner with Intuit is the online lender Earnest.

Through this new program, developers can build services to benefit the 28 million people using the tax preparation software. Intuit believes this will lead to “innovation in financial services that solves consumers’ biggest financial challenges and helps them achieve their financial dreams.”

While Inuit is starting with Earnest, there are plans to add additional partners. Those with access to the open platform will have the ability to provide personalized offers to TurboTax Online users. In the future, Intuit said it will offer SDKs that leverage financial identity, accounts, activity, and documents and host experiences within the platform. “Ultimately, we believe we can help developers reach the right users based on anonymized and rich financial data; create personalized offers for better conversion, because they are hyper-targeted; and streamline account creation and application completion with data that has never been available before,” said a company spokesperson.

One market that’s being targeted is student loans. Intuit believes it can facilitate solutions through its platform because it hosts both tax and credit score data. Through partners, its customers can leverage their personal information to receive relevant applications and offers around re-financing, with the most interesting products brought to their attention.

Future integrations will be added, but Intuit said it’s going to be cautious about selecting partners. It wants those that will provide the highest levels of personalization in a streamlined manner.

Earnest gets to be the guinea pig as the inaugural partner. Intuit selected the lender because “they already use data science to understand individuals at a deep level and save people money. They go far beyond the credit score by considering an individual’s full professional and financial profile to offer clients the terms and rates they deserve.”

This isn’t the first time Intuit has established a developer program. It currently has one around its QuickBooks accounting software — in fact, there’s an entire conference centered around it. Third-party apps can tap into the accounting functionality and/or the payments tool. But that’s through the Intuit Developer Group. Today’s announcement is for the Consumer Open Platform, which is heavily focused on individual consumers.