Digital payments company PayPal has agreed to acquire Honey Science, a Los Angeles-based shopping and rewards technology platform, for about $4bn.
PayPal expects the combination of Honey Science with its own two-sided network to transform the shopping experience for its consumers apart from boosting sales and customer engagement for its merchants.
What Honey Science does
Established in 2012, the Los Angeles firm developed a discovery tool that enables consumers to search for offers during their online shopping. The company is said to have grown its suite of products and services to add an offers and rewards programme, mobile shopping assistant, and price-tracking tools and alerts.
Honey Science, which is claimed to have close to 17 million monthly active users, is said to work with nearly 30,000 online retailers across various sectors to provide shopping offers and rewards.
The transaction is said to support PayPal and Honey Science’s shared mission to simplify and customise shopping experiences for consumers while bringing in conversion and enhancing consumer engagement and sales for merchants.
Honey Science co-founder George Ruan said: “Honey’s vision has always been to give consumers the tools they need to make the best decisions with their money.
“PayPal shares that vision and together we can build powerful commerce capabilities that create real value for both consumers and retailers around the world.”
Honey Science is expected to speed up its growth by driving adoption among more than 275 million active consumer accounts of PayPal and Venmo. The company will also be able to source exclusive offers from PayPal’s network of 24 million merchant accounts.
PayPal said that the transaction will enable it to reach consumers at the start of their shopping journeys and will improve its ability to help merchants acquire and convert consumers by providing offers that are personalised, optimised, and timely across channels.
PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman said: “The combination of Honey’s complementary consumer products with our platform will significantly enhance our ability to drive engagement and play a more meaningful role in the daily lives of our consumers.
“As a partner of choice for our merchants, this is another way that we can help them build and strengthen their customer relationships, provide personalized offers, and drive incremental sales.”
The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, is likely to be wrapped up in the first quarter of next year.
