PayPal spends $4 billion to acquire Honey, a platform that helps consumers (aproximately 17 million monthly active users) find savings as they shop online

PayPal Holdings, Inc. announced that it has agreed to acquire Honey Science Corporation, a rapidly-growing technology platform for shopping and rewards, for approximately $4 billion. Honey, in combination with PayPal’s two-sided network, will transform the shopping experience for PayPal’s consumers while increasing sales and customer engagement for its merchants.

Founded in 2012, Honey is best known as a popular discovery tool that helps consumers find savings as they shop online. Honey has continued to grow and evolve, expanding its suite of products and services to include a mobile shopping assistant, offers and rewards program, and price-tracking tools and alerts.

With approximately 17 million monthly active users, Honey has helped millions of people find more than $1 billion in savings in the past year. Honey currently works across approximately 30,000 online retailers ranging from fashion and technology, to travel and pizza delivery.

Honey was profitable on a net income basis in 2018.

The acquisition supports PayPal and Honey’s shared mission to simplify and personalize shopping experiences for consumers while driving conversion and increasing consumer engagement and sales for merchants.

The combination will help accelerate growth across both companies. Honey will accelerate its growth by driving adoption among PayPal and Venmo’s more than 275 million active consumer accounts and sourcing exclusive offers from PayPal’s extensive network of 24 million merchant accounts.

Honey will enable PayPal to reach consumers at the beginning of their shopping journeys and will enhance PayPal’s ability to help merchants acquire and convert consumers by delivering offers that are personalized, timely, and optimized across channels.

„Honey is amongst the most transformative acquisitions in PayPal’s history. It provides a broad portfolio of services to simplify the consumer shopping experience, while at the same time making it more affordable and rewarding,” said Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal.

„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. „

„Combining PayPal’s assets and reach with our technology, we can build powerful new online shopping experiences for consumers and merchants,” said Ryan Hudson, co-founder Honey. „We’ll have the ability to help millions of retailers efficiently reach consumers with offers that deliver more and more value to Honey members.”

The PayPal platform is empowering 300 million consumers and merchants in more than 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy.

Honey Science Corporation is an L.A.-based tech company building tools to help people save time and money when shopping online. What started as a browser extension has grown into a suite of free tools that help everyone shop with confidence. „From notifying you when a price drops, to showing you the lowest prices available, Honey provides you with the information that you need to make the best decisions with your money.”, the company says.