PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards startup Honey for $4 billion

Payments giant, PayPal, announced yesterday that it has agreed to acquire Los Angeles-based Honey Science, a rapidly-growing technology platform for shopping and rewards startup, for approximately $4 billion. Designed to help consumers save time and money, A profitable startup, Honey has over 10 million users worldwide to shop in over 30,000 retailers.

The acquisition will enable PayPal to offer better shopping experience for its consumers while increasing sales and customer engagement for its merchants. The combined company 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 offers from PayPal’s network of 24 million merchant accounts.

Following the acquisition, Honey will retain its headquarters and brand in Los Angeles, California. Honey co-founders George Ruan and Ryan Hudson will continue to lead the Honey team as part of PayPal’s global consumer product and technology organization, reporting to Senior Vice President John Kunze.

Founded in 2012 by George Ruan and Ryan Hudson, Honey is a discovery tool for consumers to find savings as they shop online. Its suite of products and services include a mobile shopping assistant, offers and rewards program, and price-tracking tools and alerts. Honey’s free browser extension automatically finds and applies coupons at checkout, it also helps users save money on Amazon by showing price history, best price detection and a product called Droplist that watches select products and sends notifications when it drops below a selected price.

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. 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 combination of Honey and PayPal adds another significant and meaningful dimension to our two-sided platform.”

“Honey’s vision has always been to give consumers the tools they need to make the best decisions with their money,” said Ruan. “PayPal shares that vision and together we can build powerful commerce capabilities that create real value for both consumers and retailers around the world.”

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