Mint, wholly owned by financial technology leader Intuit, hasannounced a new iPad app that it claims will set a new benchmarkfor mobile personal financial management.

Key to the tool–a free download from Apple's App Store–is thatit is designed to take advantage of the large iPad screen size. Butthe app also allows syncing and real-time updating of key financialdata across a range of devices such as an Android phone or iPhoneand a laptop or desktop computer.

Introduced this week, the iPad app is proving to be by farMint's most successful mobile app by number of downloads, said KenSun, mobile manager for Mint.

“Mint gives the user a 360-degree view of his or her finances,”said Sun. He elaborated that when visiting a credit union or acredit card company's app, a user would get a view just of thatinstitution. With Mint, the totality of a user's finances isvisible immediately.

To ease user set up, Mint is populated with account informationfrom 18,000 institutions, ranging from credit unions to PayPal,said Sun. In most cases, a user has only to enter his onlinesign-in name and password to gain access to his data.

Interesting, too, is that early usage patterns suggest differentuse for the iPad app versus the smartphone apps, said Sun. Thelatter typically are used throughout the day in 30 to 60 secondbursts, where the user wants a particular chunk of information(“did the rent check clear?”). With the iPad app, said Sun, Mint isseeing much longer sessions, often at night, as users “surf throughtheir finances.”

Sun elaborated that Mint's monetization model for the free appis to earn revenues by delivering targeted suggestions to users(“You may be overpaying for auto insurance. Would you likesuggestions about how to lower costs?”). “We will earn referralfees when Mint users buy,” said Sun, who insisted Mint intended todeliver only “relevant” suggestions drawn from an intimateunderstanding of the user's spending.