PayPal gets anti-fraud ability with $120m acquisition of Simility
Like an intense Doritos-covered video game player desperate for more power-ups, PayPal has made another acquisition in its quest for payments domination.
By the time you finish reading this report, it may have bought another firm
Following on from its $400 million purchase of Hyperwallet on 20 June, it has now acquired fraud prevention and risk management platform Simility for $120 million.
Bill Ready, COO and EVP, PayPal, says this acquisition, like the ones of Swift Financial, iZettle, Jetlore and Hyperwallet over the last twelve months, is “part of a concerted effort to strengthen the suite of services” it can provide to merchants to become the “one-stop solution for global commerce”.
He adds: “Digital commerce has exploded, and fraudsters have taken note, adapting and developing new methods to carry out their crimes.”
PayPal invested in Simility last year because it says it built a suite of fraud tools that allow merchants to adjust individual risk rules to reduce fraudulent payment activity and, in some cases, verify transactions that may have otherwise failed.
Following the close of the deal, merchants on the PayPal platform will gain access to fraud tools that can be customised through their existing account management dashboard.
Ready says PayPal will begin integration efforts with Simility at the close of the acquisition, which is expected in the third quarter of 2018.
Once the acquisition closes, Simility CEO Rahul Pangam and the Simility team will report to VP of enterprise services platforms Tushar Shah.
PayPal will also get an office in Hyderabad, India. Could be handy as that country is a real battle ground in the fight for payments and e-commerce.
Don’t stop me now
PayPal has been involved in plenty of other recent action.
Last month, PayPal and Google Pay took the next steps on the path to eternal love by deepening their payments relationship.
Also in May, and as mentioned above, PayPal said it will acquire Stockholm-based small business e-commerce platform iZettle for $2.2 billion, giving it a payments boost in Europe and Latin America.
While in April, Dosh, a paytech and advertising start-up that gets consumers cash back on certain purchases, raised a $44 million Series A round of funding from some big-name investors, including PayPal.
