PayPal has made an offer to buy digital pinboard site Pinterest for $45 billion, indicating the start of a combination between financial technology and social media companies in e-ecommerce.
PayPal plans to finance the acquisition mostly through stock, Bloomberg News and Reuters reported.
San Jose, California-based PayPal and Pinterest did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp announced plans to leave the company to join LoveFrom, a firm led by Jony Ive, the designer of many iconic Apple products.
Sharp founded the San Francisco, California-based online scrapbook and photo-sharing platform along with Ben Silbermann, who is the company’s chief executive officer, and Paul Sciarra, who left in 2012.
Over the past few years, PayPal has displayed growing ambitions to increase its footprint in online shopping through a series of acquisitions, including a $4 billion deal to buy online coupon finder Honey Science in 2019, a $2.7-billion deal to buy Japanese buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) firm Paidy in September this year, and a deal to buy return-service provider Happy Returns in May.
