PayPal, the American payment giant, has made a $45 billion offer to buy Pinterest, a popular social media and image-sharing service, a move that could lead to more financial technology and social media tie-ups in eCommerce.
It would be the largest social media acquisition, exceeding Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016.
The deal talks come as online buyers increasingly buy products they see on social media, often following “influencers” on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. PayPal would be able to harness more of that eCommerce growth and diversify its revenue sources by acquiring Pinterest.
According to reports, PayPal has offered $70 per share, mostly in stock, for Pinterest. The online payments provider hopes to successfully negotiate and announce a deal by the time it reports quarterly earnings on November 8.
In recent years, PayPal had been seeking to expand its eCommerce services through acquisitions. Honey Science, an online coupon finder, was acquired for $4 billion in 2019 and Paidy, a Japanese buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) startup, was purchased for $2.7 billion earlier this year. In May, it acquired Happy Returns, a return-service provider.
Pinterest was valued at about $13 billion when it went public in 2019. As a result of the lockdown restrictions, there was a significant increase in users looking for crafts and Do It Yourself (DIY) project ideas.
Pinterest is a visual search and scrapbooking tool that allows users to save, collect, and arrange images into categories based on themes. It benefited in the early days of the pandemic as advertisers flocked to social media sites to lure a captive audience that embraced a shift to eCommerce.
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