PayPal Buys Paydiant in Hopes of Battling Apple Pay

After reporting on Samsung’s foray into mobile payments yesterday, it’s another day and we’re seeing another entry into the race. PayPal is reported to be buying Paydiant for approximately $280 million USD, the developer behind the mobile wallet technology in apps for some of today’s biggest retailers. Paydiant’s technology allows merchants to build mobile payments, loyalty cards and offers into their apps, which has seen success in recent years replacing physical cards. The service allows retailers to choose what they would like to include in their offers and how they would like it to work, enabling features through NFC or QR codes. Most notably, Paydiant develops the technology for Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), which makes CurrentC, another mobile payments solution that is currently used in some of the biggest retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Kmart, CVS and more. This acquisition will position PayPal as one of the biggest Apple Pay competitors (as well as Google Wallet, Samsung Pay, etc.), as retailers are looking for an alternative to mobile payments of that sort, which is exactly what Paydiant offers and may allow PayPal to keep hold of the online payment market.