PayPal to acquire Simility for $120mln

SAN FRANCISCO: PayPal Holdings Inc has agreed to acquire fraud prevention technology company Simility for $120 million in cash, it said.

Palo Alto, California-based Simility sells machine-learning-based technology to help online merchants spot fraudsters and improve risk management.

PayPal plans to make Simility´s services available to its merchants following the close of the transaction, which is expected by the end of the third quarter, it said.

The acquisition underscores PayPal´s broader ambition to offer small online merchants the same capabilities of bigger e-commerce providers, Bill Ready, the company´s chief operating officer said in an interview. "We are buying a company that provides great tools that merchants can use on their own," Ready said. For example, merchants will be able to use Simility´s technology to adjust their fraud controls based on what kind of products they sell.

The acquisition is the fourth deal announced by PayPal in little over a month, as it continues to aggressively expand its business beyond just online payment processing.

Since separating from online marketplace eBay in 2015, PayPal in San Jose, California, has sought to transform itself via partnerships and acquisitions from mostly processing online transactions for its parent company to offering a suite of digital financial services. These range from lending to small businesses to facilitating money transfers between merchants and customers. In May it said it had agreed to acquire Swedish payments company iZettle for $2.2 billion, in its largest ever acquisition.