Intuit Inc. and private equity fund Thoma Bravo announced Mondaythey had reached a definite agreement for Thoma Bravo to acquireIntuit Financial Services for $1.025 billion.

The cash deal, which is subject to regulatory review, isexpected to close in a few months

Per numbers provided by Callahan & Associates to CreditUnion Times, 339 credit unions use IFS for Internet homebanking.

The total number of online banking customers is several timesthat, said industry sources. Those numbers include both banks andcredit unions. Intuit had not responded to a request for an updatedcount of credit union customers.

IFS's digital banking operations originated as Digital Insightin 1995, the year it was founded by two former staffers of creditunion core processor XP Systems. In 2007 it was sold to Quicken owner Intuit and in 2010 the Digital Insight name was retired.

In the press release announcing the deal Monday, Thoma Bravoindicated its intent to invest in IFS was to raise the group'sdigital game.

“IFS is the premier provider of online and mobile bankingsoftware to financial institutions, markets which should continueto see secular growth and further end-user adoption,” said HoldenSpaht, partner at Thoma Bravo, in a prepared statement. “ThomaBravo will continue to support the company's mission of providingbest-in-class products to support its large base of customers andend users.”

Included in the sale are IFS' Internet banking platform, digitalpayments, mobile banking, FinanceWorks personal financialmanagement software, and digital banking add-on solutions as wellas third-party solutions. Certain other assets – including Mint.com – are excluded from the sale and will remain atIntuit.

In a statement, Intuit CEO Brad Smith explained why Intuit madethis move: “Intuit will sharpen its focus on directly servingconsumers and small businesses, and continuing to build our durablecompetitive advantage in those segments.”

IFS, by its nature, is a business-to-business play that,apparently, no longer fits in the Intuit portfolio.

In response to a request to clarify the possible impacts oncredit unions of this sale, an Intuit spokesperson emailed: “It'sreally too early to say. We'll be able to talk more about nextsteps when we get to the close in the next few months.”

Thoma Bravo, in its boilerplate, in part says this about thecompany: “Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity investment firmbuilding on a 30+ year history of providing equity and strategicsupport to experienced management teams and growing companies. …Thoma Bravo invests across multiple industries, with a particularfocus on application and infrastructure software and financial andbusiness services. …Thoma Bravo has invested in 26 companies thathave completed 60 add-on acquisitions to produce total annualearnings of approximately $1 billion.”