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PayPal announced it has acquired StackMob, a backend-as-a-service company that helps
PayPal acquires StackMob for mobile payments capabilities
developers easily implement features in mobile apps. You can, for example, use it to add social network logins and push notifications to your app.
StackMob will join PayPal’s core engineering team to help refresh its platforms, which should help when it comes to developing future apps and services, as well as help developers who want to tap into PayPal’s APIs and services. Since StackMob has focused on mobile so far, it will end up beefing up PayPal’s own mobile offerings (the company launched a massive redesign of its mobile apps back in September).
“They’ve proven the ability to build really flexible and solid platforms,” comments PayPal CTO James Baresse. “When you look up and down at PayPal, we are rapidly expanding and in many case rewriting parts of our backend. Given our need to have really amazing services, both for internal engineers as well as our external experience, we need experience on how you build these things out at scale.”
Paypal wants to dominate payments–both online and in the real world. To do that, mobile is key. Scooping StackMob will give Paypal more firepower in the looming battle for mobile payments as smartphones begin to replace credit cards and cash.
Over the past few years, Paypal has reiterated the need to modernize its technology. But while it’s made some advancements on its own, it’s often chosen to snap up startups that can give it an immediate leg up. Case in point: After spending a year trying to revamp its APIs, it ended up buying Braintree for $800 million earlier this year, which will give it a much more advanced (and developer friendly) API platform.
“The whole backend-as-a-service idea is about lowering barriers to successful mobile development,” says Ty Amell StackMob founder and CEO. “I think PayPal is uniquely positioned to really lower the barriers there [as] no one else [can].”
Amell says all of StackMob’s technical team, as well as most of its non-technical team, will be headed to PayPal’s headquarters in San Jose. When asked if StackMob will continue to operate as normal (its existing customers include Box, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless), he said it was too early to tell since the acquisition just closed today.
If you’re a StackMob customer, it’s probably time to consider other options.
StackMob has raised $7.5 million so far from Trinity Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital, and Baseline Ventures.
The post PayPal acquires StackMob for mobile payments capabilities appeared first on Payments Cards & Mobile.
