Skip to main content

PayPal to move into daily deals, threat to Groupon

The daily deals market may well be overcrowded, but that’s not stopping online payment giant PayPal from announcing its intention to get involved.

The eBay-owned company plans to use information from its 103 million members to offer deals tailored to their buying habits straight to their mobile phone when, for example, they’re passing a particular store. It believes that offering a location-based service like this will give it an advantage over other daily deals companies.

Recommended Videos

Bloomberg reported PayPal president Scott Thompson as saying the company hopes to begin offering mobile deals in the first few months of 2012. Market leaders Groupon and Amazon-backed LivingSocial, which combined had an estimated 73 percent share of the daily deals market in October, will no doubt be watching with great interest.

While a slew of companies have come and gone in the daily deals market, PayPal will be entering with more than 100 million people already on its books, with buying habits that can be analysed, giving it a big advantage over those that have tried and failed before.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg at PayPal’s San Jose HQ, Thompson promised an experience “completely different than anyone else’s through and through.”

He added: “We’ll only give you something that we think fits the category of unique and relevant. Everyone else is going to bombard you.”

Fear of competition in the daily deals market was said to be one of the reasons Groupon’s share value dived after the Chicago-based company went public at the beginning of last month. Launching at $20 a share, their value initially jumped by some 50 percent before settling at around the $26 mark. Toward the end of last month, however, they fell below the launch price to just under $17. Since then they’ve clawed their way back to around the $22 mark, though it’ll be interesting to see what impact the announcement by PayPal has on their value.

With research firm BIA/Kelsey estimating that the daily deals market could double in value by 2015 to $4.17 billion, it’s little wonder PayPal has decided to get involved.

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
How to deactivate your Instagram account (or delete it)
A person holding a phone with the Instagram app open on it.

Oh, social media. Sometimes it’s just too much, folks.

If you’re finding yourself in a position where shutting down your Instagram account for a period of time sounds good, the people at Meta have made it pretty simple to deactivate it. It’s also quite easy to completely delete your Instagram, although we wouldn’t recommend this latter option if you plan on returning to the platform at a later date.

Read more
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Incogni: Recover your privacy and remove personal information from the internet
Incogni remove your personal data from brokers and more

Everything you do while online is tracked digitally. Often connected to your email address or an issued IP, trackers can easily identify financial details, sensitive information like your social security number, demographics, contact details, like a phone number or address, and much more. In many ways, this information is tied to a digital profile and then collated, recorded, and shared via data brokers. There are many ways this information can be scooped up and just as many ways, this information can be shared and connected back to you and your family. The unfortunate reality is that, for most of us, we no longer have any true privacy.

The problem is exacerbated even more if you regularly use social media, share content or images online, or engage in discussions on places like Reddit or community boards. It's also scary to think about because even though we know this information is being collected, we don't necessarily know how much is available, who has it, or even what that digital profile looks like.

Read more