Daily deals and “local e-commerce” provider Groupon has acquired the comparison shopping site for merchants seeking payment processing services FeeFighters for an undisclosed sum. FeeFighters has been in business three years and amassed $1.5 million in venture funding prior to its sale to Groupon. The company runs the processor comparison marketplace and a payment gateway called Samurai. A blog post from the company’s CEO last Friday states that the company is not planning any major changes to the product line and there will be brand continuity for FeeFighters and Samurai.
From VentureBeat:
“Our goals have always been to help small businesses run more efficiently, and by teaming up with Groupon, a pioneer in local e-commerce, we are able to execute on that goal even better than we were as an independent company,” FeeFighters co-founder and CEO Sean Harper said Friday in statement.
Chicago-based FeeFighters operates a reverse auction marketplace where small business owners can pick a [provider] for credit card processing. The company also offers its own payment gateway. The products will remain operable, Harper said.
The obvious connection between the two companies is their joint interest in catering to the needs of small business owners. Groupon has, of late, demonstrated a strong interest in developing tools for its merchant community and just launched a scheduling tool (the product of a previous acquisition) for taking online reservations. In theory, Groupon could employ FeeFighters to help merchants process payments when customers book appointments.
Click here to read more from VentureBeat.
