PayPal has acquired mobile payments company Fig Card for an undisclosed sum in a deal that sees the start-up's founders, serial entrepreneurs Max Metral and John Granbery, join the eBay unit.
Founded last year, Boston-based Fig Card has developed a way for merchants to accept mobile payments in stores by using a low cost USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal.
To make payments, customers download an app to their iPhone, Android devices or BlackBerrys and set up a payment method.
Under the deal, Metral and Granbery are both joining the PayPal mobile team. Metral co-founded and acted as CTO of Web-privacy pioneer Firefly which was sold to Microsoft in 1998. He met Granbery at PeoplePC, which was sold to Earthlink and the pair later reunited at a software platform company called Arts Alliance Labs.
Explaining the acquisition, Peter Chu, senior director, PayPal Mobile, says: "We loved their approach to point-of-sale, particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal - in the future, transactions can be as smart as a computer and not as dumb as paper. We won't need our physical wallets. We'll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy."