Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. Silicon Alley Insider first reported a rumor on this. The deal should be announced in the next few days.

Update: CEO Aaron Patzer has just confirmed the deal on-stage at TechCrunch50, and written a guest post describing The Value of TechCrunch50 that contains more details.

This is a terrific exit for Mint, which first launched two years ago at TechCrunch50. Mint took the top prize at that event and has been growing fast ever since. Their last round of financing valued the company at $140 million.

In all, Mint has raised $32 million over three venture rounds.

Earlier this year Mint and Intuit had a humorous clash over Mint advertising claims of gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months. Intuit sent a letter to Mint demanding an explanation for this apparently inconceivable feat, which we obtained and printed here.

We have just one question for founder and CEO Aaron Patzer, though. Can we please have our $50,000 grand prize back? It seems like you don’t really need it any more.