PayPal Buys Mobile Payment Outfit Paydiant

In a move to expand its mobile payment capabilities, PayPal (News - Alert) is buying Paydiant. The deal, which is reportedly valued at $280 million, is expected to close this month or next.

Paydiant, a five-year-old company based in the Boston area, works with a good number of high-profile companies, including Capital One (News - Alert), Harris Teeter Supermarkets, as well as CVS, Exxon, Sear, Target, Walmart, and Wendy’s. The first three worked with Paydiant to build mobile payments, offers, and loyalty capabilities into their own mobile applications. The other six are just a sampling of the companies that have been working with Paydiant on a mobile wallet platform via the MCX Merchant Customer Exchange, a merchant-owned mobile commerce network.

“Using Paydiant’s platform, our merchant partners can now create their own branded wallets to accelerate mobile-in-store payments and drive consumer engagement through mobile payments, loyalty, offers and the prioritization of preferred payment types, such as store branded credit cards and gift cards,” Dan Schulman, PayPal president and CEO designee, wrote in a March 2 blog. “Similar to PayPal, Paydiant’s technology agnostic approach means that merchants can use any mobile payment technology – QR codes or NFC – that best suits their business.” 

And giving merchants and their customers the ability to support an array of payment types by providing a technology-agnostic platform is what PayPal – whose parent company, EBay, plans to spin it off later this year – says it’s all about.  

The Paydiant deal follows by about a year PayPal’s acquisition of Braintree.

PayPal is expanding its digital payment arsenal as the battle to gain market share in this emerging space heats up. Others in the fray include Apple with its Apple Pay; Google (News - Alert) with Google Wallet and a new service Google unveiled this week at Mobile World Congress called Android Pay; and Samsung Pay. In related news, Samsung in late February announced the acquisition of mobile wallet solutions provider LoopPay.