Zong acquired by eBay for $240M. UPDATED: Online auction company eBay Inc. announced it has agreed to acquire Zong, a direct carrier biller, for approximately $240 million in cash.
Zong offers consumers the ability to pay for digital goods by placing the charge on their monthly mobile phone bills. In the United States, direct carrier billing is important to gaming and social media companies where customers may not have access to credit and debit cards. It's also becoming an important link to basic, secure financial services for the unbanked in developing economies. According to the announcement of the deal, Zong gives eBay, and its payment subsidiary PayPal, connections to more than 250 mobile network operators in 45 countries. "Commerce is changing," said PayPal President Scott Thompson in the announcement. M-commerce company WHERE acquired by eBay. CEO says eBay POS solution to launch later this year. During its second quarter earnings call Wednesday night, online auction company eBay, Inc. recapped a busy quarter for its payment subsidiary PayPal, highlighting PayPal’s mobile payment growth.
The company's CEO, John Donahoe, also announced eBay would be moving forward with trials for a PayPal mobile point-of-sale solution later this year, with a larger rollout planned for 2012. Donahoe's comments confirmed the time frame for plans it announced earlier this year; namely, that PayPal is looking to compete directly with the likes of Google and Isis to provide a mobile payment method for the brick-and-mortar world. Donahoe was adamant that PayPal's solution would be better received by merchants than any solution pushing near field communications (NFC) products. "(T)he people that are really going to drive this at the end of the day are going to be the merchants," Donahoe said. Story continues below...