U.S. payments platform PayPal has been slowly inching toward becoming a super app in the past few years. Today’s news that the California-based company has acquired Happy Returns indicates a step further toward that goal.
Terms of the deal are undisclosed.
“The post-purchase experience is something we’ve been looking into, since it’s such a pain point — people want to shop online and return in store, and vice versa,” PayPal SVP of Consumer In-Store and Digital Commerce Frank Keller told CNBC in an interview. “For retailers, we’re providing more comprehensive services beyond payments.”
Happy Returns launched in 2015 to provide box-free, in-person returns for online orders. The company sees the benefits as three-fold– it makes for a better customer experience, it is less expensive for the merchant, and is less wasteful and therefore better for the environment.
Consumers making purchases at one of Happy Returns’ hundreds of brand partners can use the company’s software to make returns at 2,600+ drop-off locations in 1,200+ cities across every U.S. state.
What started as PayPal’s flagship payments platform expanded to encompass the pre-purchase shopping experience when the company acquired Honey in 2019. Today, with the addition of Happy Returns, PayPal adds another element to serve the post-shopping experience to its already robust platform.
This holistic shopping experience is in line with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman’s plan for the company. Schulman recently announced PayPal will roll out a “next-generation” digital wallet that will offer a personalized shopping, financial services, and payments experience.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash