Rakuten To Pay Almost $1 Billion For Ebates

Coupon/rebate site Ebates is being pursued by Japanese E-Commerce giant Rakuten, which is prepared to pay $950 million to take the site over, according to a report in The Financial Times. “The deal is expected to be announced later this week, according to a person familiar with the talks. Rakuten disclosed the talks on Saturday (Sept. 6).”

The San Francisco-based privately-held coupon operation claims more than $1.6 billion in revenue via some 1,700 online partners, including Amazon, Walmart and Macy’s.

Rakuten has been on quite a spending spree lately as it tries and position itself as the world’s largest E-Commerce operation, alongside arch-rival Amazon. “Rakuten, founded by Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997, spent $900m on Israeli instant messaging provider Viber in February. That prefaced an acquisition of U.S.-based ecommerce app Slice last month, and a tie-up with AirAsia, the discount regional carrier, in July,” the Financial Times report said. “Rakuten, which also purchased Buy.com for $250m in 2010, is looking to ramp up its presence in the U.S. market in the face of rising competition from both traditional rivals such as Amazon.com and eBay and newer players such as China’s Alibaba. Rakuten has expanded users of its Japanese online store to more than 90 million by using a system that rewards members with points that can later be used as discounts for purchases. The addition of Ebates may mean Rakuten will introduce cash rebates to increase its users globally, analysts suggested.”

Rakuten also purchased Canada’s Kobo, an ebooks business, for $315m in 2012 and later that year acquired Wuaki.tv, a Europe-based video-on-demand and streaming service. Last September, it bought Viki, an online video platform that provides subtitles in more than 160 languages. It has also invested in Pinterest, the online scrapbook site, the story said.