EBay’s PayPal unit plans to take on Groupon in early 2012 with a new service that will offer coupons based on users’ buying habits and mobile phone locations.
PayPal has partnered with 200 U.S. merchants for the offering, says Anuj Nayar, a PayPal rep. The service first reported in Bloomberg, will launch in the first quarter of next year. Nayar declined to say who the merchants are.
Though others, such as Facebook and Yelp, have attempted and failed to compete in the daily deals segment, Nayar says PayPal will use the knowledge of its 103 million customers’ preferences and mobile technology from the recently acquired Where to make the offers more relevant than what Groupon, LivingSocial and Amazon (which is also a LivingSocial investor), currently offer.
“As a 40 year-old male, I don’t think I’ll ever use a coupon for 50% off bikini wax,” Nayar says, referring to irrelevant deals from competitors. Nayar says the goal is to use laser beam-like targeting to make sure the offers are germane.
PayPal’s entry could shake up the daily deals category, which is estimated to more than double to $4.17 billion in 2015, according to researcher BIA/Kelsey.
The report comes after other recent attempts to grow PayPal’s estimated $4.7 billion total payment volume, including a Facebook app designed to send money to friends unveiled in November and a mobile payment system that made its debut that month.
Meanwhile, PayPal’s parent company, eBay, has been offering online daily deals for years, Nayar says.
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