On Wednesday, PayPal Holdings Inc has offered to buy digital pin board site Pinterest Inc for $45 billion, a combination that could herald more financial technology and social media tie-ups in e-commerce. It would be the biggest acquisition of a social media company, surpassing Microsoft Corp’s $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016.
The deal talks come as internet shoppers increasingly buy items they see on social media, often following “influencers” on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. Acquiring Pinterest would allow PayPal to capture more of that e-commerce growth and diversify its income through advertising revenue.
PayPal has offered $70 per share, mostly in stock, for Pinterest, one of the sources stated. The online provider hopes to successfully negotiate and announce a deal by the time it reports quarterly earnings on November 8.
Pinterest is an image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically “ideas”) on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards. The site was created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, and had over 478 million global monthly active users as of March 2021. It is operated by Pinterest, Inc., based in San Francisco.
