PayPal buys into mobile money services with WHERE

PayPal, which is a division of digital auctioneering giant eBay, has announced that it is buying a mobile location, advertising and commerce company called WHERE. We’ve reported on WHERE several times before, as the company has been very busy this last year – now we take a look at what this acquisition means for PayPal and WHERE.

What’s the story?

Neither eBay nor PayPal need much of an introduction – the first is the largest provider of on-line auctions in the world, and the second is the most popular secure payment provider in the world. Both of these companies have a keen interest in the mobile industry. PayPal has had various mobile and app launches (most importantly, the Mobile Express Checkout), and eBay gives us triumphant yearly updates on how many items have been sold over its mobile channel.

So where does WHERE come in?

WHERE, INC is a location company. It started out as an internet-entity, providing local results for searches on your computer. But as mobile as grown as an industry, WHERE has steadily expanded into it. It’s not just a local search company – it’s a local services company; through WHERE, users can run local searches, enter their preferences to receive recommendations, create and share lists, access guides, and more. It also launched its own mobile ad network last year, WHERE Ads – for which it had 100 advertising partners by last September. It even bought a coupon company of it’s own, Local Ginger, allowing it to enter the mobile daily deal market.

What we think?

While WHERE has now become part of the eBay family, it is PayPal that will be putting the company to use. What can we expect to see from them. PayPal has already gotten the mobile commerce side of things worked out. It’s a fully functioning platform, that other mobile retailers can plug into their systems. What it can now build in, with WHERE, is a series of services that expand on the PayPal offering. If you’re a brand or retailer that is looking at building a payment option into your mobile property, PayPal will be able to offer more than just simple cash transactions. It will be able to offer mobile advertising, location and discovery. There are a huge number of shapes that these services might be able to take – I’m actually quite excited to see what PayPal will be announcing for mobile in the future.