PayPal acquires maker of shopping extension Honey for $4 Billion

PayPal announced the acquisition of Honey Science Corporation on November 20, 2019. The acquired company is best known for its shopping extension Honey.
Honey is one of the most popular extensions for Google Chrome; in fact, it is one of the few extensions that crossed the ten million user mark on the Chrome Web Store. The extension is also available for other web browsers including Firefox and the classic Microsoft Edge web browser.
Honey is a shopping extension that looks up items at other retailers to provide potential shoppers with coupons or better prices. The main idea behind the extension is to inform users if the item is available for a better price elsewhere or if coupons are available to reduce the price on the active site.
The technology that Honey uses tests coupons semi-automatically on the shopping site and may apply the best coupon that works to the checkout process automatically.
The service is also available as a mobile application -- called Honey Smart Shopping Assistant -- and there are also options to browse available coupons and promotions on the official website. Honey may furthermore track item prices for its users to inform them when the price of an item drops below a set threshold.
There is also a rewards program called Honey Gold which rewards members with a virtual currency that they may redeem for gift cards.
Honey earns money from affiliate commissions. Whenever users of the browser extension or site make purchases, Honey earns a percentage that is paid by the shopping site.
Honey claims that it saved its customers $1 billion in the past year alone, that it has 17 million active users per month, and it works across 30,000 online retailers.
According to Forbes, Honey made an estimated revenue of about $100 million US Dollars in 2018.
PayPal revealed that it paid "approximately $4 billion" US Dollars for the company and its products. The company wants to combine Honey with PayPal's "two-sided network" to "transform the shopping experience for PayPal consumers" and to increase "sales and customer engagement" for PayPal merchants.
PayPal has not mentioned specifics in regards to integration of Honey in PayPal products or vice versa. It seems likely that Honey and PayPal will benefit from the deal in the long run.
Honey co-founder Ryan Hudson provided the following statement.
"Combining PayPal’s assets and reach with our technology, we can build powerful new online shopping experiences for consumers and merchants,†said Hudson. “We’ll have the ability to help millions of retailers efficiently reach consumers with offers that deliver more and more value to Honey members."
Closing Words
Four billion is a huge sum of money for a browser extension and technology. It is too early to tell if the acquisition will have a negative impact as well.
Now You: Have you used Honey? What's your take on the news?


WOW I can’t believe this crapware spyware is worth 4 BILLIONS!!!
Looks like all those Youtubers shilling Honey actually worked!
Used it for a month. Not once did I get even a penny off. Such a fake waste. 4 Billion for what….
Just days ago PayPal abruptly cut off account access to about one hundred thousand honeys.
I see what you did there, lol.
Wow! Can you post a link to the ‘real’ honey extension? I’d like to check it out.
Here it is: https://www.joinhoney.com/
I’ve not used Honey because I assume that it’s collecting data about their users and don’t want to take part in that. PayPal buying them increases my concern about that.
But, for people who are less concerned about such things, I’m guessing the acquisition makes sense.
This crap’s tracking you all over the web, lmao
Hi Martin,
Are you considering publishing an article on the recent acquisition of Private Internet Access by Kape Technologies?
I’m looking into it.
There is quite a good review of alternatives listed here;
https://thatoneprivacysite.net/
Looks like a number of people have had good experience leveraging either Mullvad or ProntonVPN, ymmv.