PayPal to Acquire Shopping and Rewards Platform Honey

PayPal announced that it has agreed to acquire Honey Science Corporation, a rapidly-growing technology platform for shopping and rewards, for approximately $4 billion.

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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.

What is Honey?

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.

PayPal and Honey Share Mission to Personalize Shopping Experiences

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. 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,” said Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal

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.

The company was profitable on a net income basis in 2018. Subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals, the transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020.