PayPal Makes its Largest Acquisition of $4 Bn - 'Honey', A Discount Codes and Coupons Finder

Payment firm PayPal has announced today that it is buying Honey for $4 billion. Honey is a website and browser (Chrome & Firefox) extension that lets its users save money by applying discount codes and coupons automatically at checkout. The acquisition, which will mostly in cash, will allow PayPal a leg up in deal discovery.

Los Angeles, US-based Honey was founded in 2012, by Ryan Hudson and George Ruan, and its products -- including the browser extension -- are protected by patents in the U.S. and other countries.

[caption id="attachment_138185" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Honey Co-Founders (L-R) George & Ryan[/caption]

Honey reportedly has about 17 million monthly active users, who are mostly young. Honey has a similar model to that of an affiliate marketing, the company takes a commission from merchants when shoppers use Honey (or its rewards program Honey Gold) to make a purchase. Honey has reportedly saved shoppers over $2 billion to date and generated $100 million in revenue last year.

PayPal, which currently has 300 million users, will add Honey to its own product line, which includes millennial-minded payments app Venmo. While Honey currently works with around 30,000 merchants, PayPal works with about 24 million merchants, and will now be able to offer more targeted coupons to shoppers.

~ Producthunt | Official Honey Blog