PayPal to Enter Social Commerce? Report Suggests Interest to Purchase Pinterest – Update 10/25 – Not Interested
Bloomberg reports this morning that PayPal is exploring to acquire social media platform Pinterest, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
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Shares of Pinterest soared and trading in the company’s stock was halted twice before gaining 11% as of late morning, according to CNBC.
According to the insiders Bloomberg based its story on, PayPal approached Pinterest recently about a potential deal, discussing a price around $70 a share which would value Pinterest at roughly $39 billion.
Pinterest stock closed Tuesday night at $55.58 per share.
PayPal Interest in Pinterest Significant Development for Online Commerce
While the financial world is evaluating the seriousness of this potential acquisition by PayPal, the impact on eCommerce could be significant.
Pinterest has been slowly adapting new shopping tools to make its platform more interesting for digital marketers and online businesses. But unlike TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram, it has not pushed for eCommerce integrations with online commerce platforms such as Shopify or BigCommerce as much.
In addition, PayPal’s payments competitor Square recently announced an integration with TikTok to bring social commerce to its payments platform.
PayPal’s experience in payment processing, its previous fully integrated history with eBay, and the direction of how social commerce has been emerging as the next big wave in online commerce could elevate Pinterest in eCommerce, with a potential to become a serious challenger to other social media platforms getting cozier with online commerce.
PayPal Says It’s Not Interested
“In response to market rumors regarding a potential acquisition of Pinterest by PayPal, PayPal stated that it is not pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time,” according to a written statement the company released late Sunday.
It’s a bit curious it took this long for PayPal to deny it was persuing Pinterest, suggesting there was at last least some discussion regarding the matter as originally reported by Bloomberg.
This would have been one of PayPal’s biggest deals valued at around $45 billion but the statement put some cold water on the acquisition, at least for now.
Note: Story was updated on 10/25 with PayPal’s denial of interest statement.
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Richard Meldner
Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.
To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.