Last week, Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) acquired FeeFighters, which provides online comparisons for small-business payment providers, for an undisclosed price.
The deal wasn’t loudly celebrated, but this move and others might mean that Groupon wants to be a broad-based provider of services for small businesses — not just a daily-deals operator.
And that might be a prudent move, considering the difficulties Groupon has had in trying to reach a profit. The small-business segment is enormous and has boosted the fortunes of top companies like Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) and ADP (NYSE:ADP).
I actually met up with FeeFighters’ founders when they got started three years ago and thought they put together a good platform. But I was a bit skeptical about the market opportunity — FeeFighters’ service was really a one-time feature for most small businesses. To deal with this, the company went on to create its own online payment system, called Samurai.
By being a part of Groupon — which has more than 30 million active users — FeeFighters should get lots of traction, and the payments system could be a lucrative revenue stream.
The FeeFighters deal comes on the heels of the acquisition of OpenCal. This transaction became the basis for the recently launched�Scheduler service, which helps small businesses keep track of reservations. It�s kind of like OpenTable (NASDAQ:OPEN). Similarly to FeeFighters, Scheduler should get a nice boost from Groupon’s massive user base.
For Groupon, deals like these and an overall shift to a broader business could be the ultimate launchpad to get the company to profitability.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog�IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He also is the author of��The Complete M&A Handbook”,��All About Short Selling��and��All About Commodities.��Follow him on Twitter at�@ttaulli�or reach him via�email. As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
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