Dive Brief:

• PayPal has acquired Jetlore, a company that uses artificial intelligence technology to power predictive and personalized marketing capabilities for retailers, for an undisclosed amount of money, according to a PayPal blog post.
• The blog post said, "With Jetlore’s talent and AI-powered technology, we will enhance and accelerate PayPal Marketing Solutions, adding new capabilities that continue to expand PayPal’s value proposition for merchants beyond the online checkout experience."
• Jetlore already has many retailer customers, including Uniqlo, Nordstrom Rack, eBay and JCPenney. The company’s offerings, such as Predictive Layouts, pledge to help customers build predictive marketing content "that relates to each user’s unique semantic preferences," to help drive increases in revenue and decreases in customer churn, according to Jetlore’s website.

Dive Insight:

We have started to see a movement toward deeper integration between payment platforms and shopping experience, the aim of which is to get shoppers from search to shopping to checkout and payment with as little friction as possible.

Samsung admitted that’s what was behind its recent launch of a Bixby Shopping feature for Samsung Pay. PayPal also appears to sense a convergence on the horizon and is responding by building up its own marketing solutions portfolio to show retailers and brands it can do more than just process transactions for them.

Right now, unlike Samsung, it doesn’t look like PayPal is intent on integrating Jetlore’s AI technology into its core mobile wallet app. Instead, it appears the capabilities will be put to work in service of PayPal Marketing Solutions, a set of marketing and analytics tools that PayPal announced last fall in the form of a merchant app.

According to the companies, merchants using these tools will be able to use Jetlore’s technology to personalize how they approach customers based on purchasing data. For example, eBay used Jetlore’s Predictive Layouts to create marketing emails built around predictive attributes related to things such as personal style and size preferences, all mapped from previous customer behavior. The result, according to a case study on Jetlore’s website, was an increase in revenue per marketing email opened, and a decline in customer churn.

PayPal traditionally is thought of as a payments service, and with good reason, but this acquisition could help retailers see the company as a more indispensable partner.