Intuit Inc. has acquired the developer team, technology and patents of Facebook e-commerce platform Payvment, which will discontinue operations. The move will bring Intuit into the world of social commerce.
From TechCrunch:
Intuit may expand on Payvment’s technology in social commerce and advertising, the two services that Payvment already offered to businesses. Here the idea will be to use Intuit’s mobile and online commerce platform, GoPayment, to push out discounts to customers via Facebook after they make a payment, facilitating repeat purchases.
Intuit is working hard to bolster GoPayment, which serves as a competitor to Square. The company today is launching a optical card-scanning service for GoPayment, which will enable merchants to scan cards for payment instead of having to swipe them with a mobile card reader. PayPal’s card.io provides a similar service.
Adding social-networking connectivity to the GoPayment service will help differentiate Intuit as it seeks to compete for micromerchant business in a tight-margin market where a growing number of vendors are finding difficult to generate a profit. Providing such businesses with an opportunity to launch Facebook storefronts and generate potential repeat business through discounts they can offer through the social channel, however, will not be a game-changer, as an additional revenue generated will be sporadic and small.
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