JPMorgan Chase and Intuit Inc. have signed an agreement to give customers greater control of their financial information to help them make better financial decisions. This agreement sets the bar for how banks and technology companies can work together to serve their shared customers. The companies will use technology that will allow customers to authorize Chase to electronically share financial data securely with Intuit's financial management applications, such as Mint, TurboTax Online and QuickBooks Online.

Both Chase and Intuit continue to pursue similar agreements with other industry players seeking to give customers more control of their financial information while enhancing security. Chase and Intuit will use a business-to-business, data-sharing connection called an application-programming interface (API) to download the information quickly and safely. It uses a token to authorize Intuit to download the requested account information on behalf of the customer without requiring customers to give Intuit their Chase user name and password.

The Chase-Intuit agreement embodies five core attributes: Security: Customers will give explicit consent to share their data with Intuit. Once authorized, Chase will provide a secure token to Intuit to access customer data. Convenience: Chase customers will see their banking information safely populated into the Intuit applications quickly.

Customer control: Customers will give explicit consent for Intuit applications to use specific account information, and will be able to turn on and off access for Intuit applications. Privacy: Chase and Intuit will strive to maintain industry best practices for data privacy and security. No data reselling: Consistent with its Data Stewardship Principles, Intuit won't sell customer data to third parties.

Routing the data traffic through the secure API will provide information directly to the Intuit applications while freeing up server capacity on Chase's website. That will improve the experience on both sites for the companies' joint customers. As part of ongoing enhancements, the companies will introduce Open Authentication, and will exchange data through the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) 2.2 API.

The functionality will be delivered in phases, starting with new Mint users.