PayPal to acquire Pinterest for $45 billion

According to Bloomberg, two people familiar with the matter revealed that online payment company PayPal is in talks with social platform Pinterest and plans to acquire the latter for about $45 billion . People familiar with the matter said that the acquisition price discussed by the two companies is about $70 per share .

If the deal goes through, it would be one of the largest corporate acquisitions this year , and the acquisition of Pinterest would also be PayPal's largest investment ever.

Pinterest has more than 450 million users. It provides a visual search and sharing platform where users can save, collect and group images by theme. Users can also post their favorite pictures and share them with others . With the rise of social e-commerce, Pinterest has also begun to enter the social e-commerce market.

Pinterest's shares have nearly tripled since its IPO in April 2019. Its business has surged during the pandemic as stay-at-home orders forced people to shop online . The Financial Times reported earlier this year that Microsoft had also approached Pinterest about a deal to build an active online community.

PayPal aims to become the world's next "super app," offering a one-stop shop for shopping and financial services, similar to China's Alipay or WeChat. In recent months, the company has said it will add a range of new services to its revamped app, including high-yield savings accounts, check-cashing services and stock investment features.

With these changes, the payments giant said it expects the number of active users on its platform to climb from 403 million to 750 million by the end of 2025. If it can achieve that goal, PayPal could become a more important part of consumers' lives, like Facebook or Amazon .

In the past few years, PayPal has been entering new markets by acquiring competitors . In 2018, it acquired European small business commerce platform iZettle ; in 2019 , PayPal acquired the price comparison application Honey Science for US$4 billion, obtaining valuable data on consumer purchasing habits . This is also the largest deal PayPal has completed to date ; in September this year , it acquired Japanese startup Paidy for US$3.5 billion to promote the development of its "buy now, pay later" business .

PayPal

Acquisition

Pinterest