PayPal liked Card.io so much, it not only used the startup to help it capture credit card images for its PayPal Here product, it is now buying the San Francisco startup. The team will join PayPal’s global product team in San Jose, where it will help PayPal build out its digital wallet.
Developers will still get access to Card.io’s video swipe technology, but it’s unclear if that will always be the case. Card.io’s technology allows developers to capture credit card data by having users scan their cards with a smartphone camera. PayPal Here, PayPal’s small business product and Square rival, offered the scanning service to merchants, giving them another way to take credit card payments without the use of a card-reading dongle.
“While working with them, we were simply blown away by the creativity and drive of their employees. They are a passionate and independent team that likes solving large, complex problems and we wanted them to join our team,” said Hill Ferguson, PayPal’s Vice President of Global Product in a blog post.
In January, Card.io launched its own payment app, allowing consumers to receive payments. The purchase price wasn’t announced but this makes a lot of sense for PayPal. The company is putting more emphasis on its digital wallet as it ramps up its efforts in-store and on mobile. Having a technology like Card.io allows PayPal to not only facilitate more payments but also potentially help with other visual scanning uses such verifying identification cards. It also keeps Card.io out of the hands of Square or other competitors, who may have looked at acquiring the startup at some point.
Card.io has raised $ 1 million from Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal, Jeff Clavier and Charles Hudson of SoftTech VC, Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures, Alok Bhanot, the former VP of Risk Technology at PayPal, and Omar Hamoui, the former CEO and founder of AdMob. In addition to PayPal, Uber, LevelUp, Lemon and other companies were deploying Card.io’s technology.
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