PinPal
PayPal is reportedly looking to acquire Pinterest for a valuation near $45bn in a bid to combine two tech companies that begin with the letter "P".
On the surface, that's about where the similarities or synergies between these two companies stop. PayPal is a payments company and Pinterest is a killer app for making mood boards about your wedding, a renovation you're doing or just stuff-you-kinda-like and might want to buy one day.
But that last piece is exactly what PayPal seems to be interested in. Combining PayPal's payment infrastructure with Pinterest's 400+ million users could - in theory - create a social commerce giant. You pin a few things you like, and voilà, suddenly PayPal makes it easy to purchase those items with a few taps on your phone.
Agree to disagree
Last quarter Pinterest active user numbers actually fell, suggesting the company might have hit its user ceiling. That's been the case for a while in the US, where Pinterest has grown only modestly since 2016, but until very recently, the international growth had been solid — driving total users over 400 million last year.
Pinterest's shares soared 10% on the news while PayPal's fell roughly 5% - which should tell you all you need to know about how the market viewed the idea.
