FeeFighters Acquired By Groupon
FeeFighters, the Chicago-based credit card processing comparison service, has been acquired by Groupon. While the acquisition price has not been reported, we’re hearing that it’s less than the minimum threshold (which is in the single digit millions). We’re not sure of the price as the company is not willing to disclose the information to us currently. The company provided a statement which states:
Most of the FeeFighters are coming along with the acquisition and we are not planning any major changes to our product line. The FeeFighters marketplace, our Samurai gateway and the FeeFighters and Samurai brands are continuing as before.
We reached out to the CEO of the company as well as a few others and have not been able to pull out much more information. Given Groupon’s ongoing expansion, it makes sense that the company would look to their backyard to pick up smaller companies as part of talent acquisitions. In addition to providing a credit card processing comparison engine, the company had also developed an online payments gateway called Samurai, although it hasn’t been around for long.
While the company states that they’ll continue operations of their products, we’ve seen plenty of acquisitions that have led to eventual product shut downs in recent months, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how this turns out. While I’m sure some of the technology developed at FeeFighters may eventually be rolled into Groupon, it’s more likely that the team who was responsible for developing the FeeFighters platform will now work on Groupon products. We’ll be sure to post more if we hear anything else!
Update As one commenter on HackerNews writes, “Groupon has a relationship with a massive number of merchants so being able to offer additional merchant services such as finding a better merchant account or reducing processing fees could be a good fit.” As such it could be far more than just a talent acquisition.