PayPal Buys AI Prediction Platform

PayPal announced Tuesday (May 29) that it has acquired Jetlore, the artificial intelligence-powered prediction platform.

In a blog post, PayPal said Jetlore’s platform is used by some of the leading retailers around the globe. “With Jetlore’s talent and AI-powered technology, we will enhance and accelerate PayPal Marketing Solutions, adding new capabilities that continue to expand PayPal’s value proposition for merchants beyond the online checkout experience,” wrote PayPal in its blog post. “We share Jetlore’s passion for creating amazing – and personalized – customer experiences and believe their capabilities will accelerate our ability to help merchants optimize content and communication for their customers.”

Jetlore is based in San Mateo, California and was founded back in 2011 by PhD students from Stanford University’s computer science program. The idea behind the company was to apply the power of machine learning to the retail industry. The company’s proprietary prediction platform empowers global online retailers such as Uniqlo and Nordstrom Rack to deliver personalized customer experiences, said PayPal.  What’s more, it said Jetlore is led by “many pioneers” in retail AI such as Eldar Sadikov, Montse Medina and Sergey Andreev. All three will join PayPal.

This isn’t the only acquisition PayPal has made in recent days. Earlier this month it announced it acquired iZettle, the Swedish payments company, for $2.2 billion in cash. With the deal, which may close in the third quarter, iZettle’s co-founder and CEO, Jacob de Geer, will reportedly continue on with iZettle, TechCrunch reported. “iZettle and PayPal are a strategic fit, with a shared mission, values and culture – and complementary product offerings and geographies,” said PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman in a statement. “In today’s digital world, consumers want to be able to buy when, where and how they want. With nearly half a million merchants on their platform, Jacob de Geer and his team add best-in-class capabilities and talent that will expand PayPal’s market opportunity to be a global one-stop solution for omnichannel commerce.”

The news comes almost one year after iZettle said it would enable users across Europe to register local mobile payments methods and send invoices through its point-of-sale app. With the app, businesses could enable the British Pay by Bank app, Swedish Swish, Norwegian Vipps and MobilePay in Denmark, Finland and Norway.