PayPal's recent $4B acquisition of Honey signals a shift into e-commerce and loyalty.
E-commerce is growing at breakneck speed.
Online sales now comprise over 11% of total US retail sales, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, with year-over-year growth reaching 17% in Q3’19.
To capitalize on this trend, payments company PayPal is looking to enable e-commerce at earlier stages of the sales funnel — expanding beyond its “bottom-of-the-funnel” checkout button. PayPal is opting to fuel this expansion inorganically. Since the start of 2018, PayPal has spent more than $6.7B on M&A, a dramatic increase compared to previous years.
