One of the largest credit card and service comparison companies in the U.S., FeeFighters, has just been purchased by Groupon as part of its strategy to broaden its horizons into the financial market. The three-year old company has been at the forefront of providing small businesses with information on payment providers and through comparison, helping these businesses determine the best payment services for their needs.
While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, the CEO of FeeFighters spoke enthusiastically about the deal, saying that the merger will allow for greater market penetration through Groupon's extensive domination and research in local e-commerce.
FeeFighters gives its users access to comparison tools that allow them to compare fees and charges between various payment processors and service providers, in order to determine which particular service is best for them. Also offered via FeeFighters is the online payment gateway Samurai, which competes with other payment processors quite competitively.
Groupon has said that it intends to keep the vast majority of FeeFighters' staff on-board and plans to continue to allow the company to function in a relatively autonomous fashion. Even though Groupon has been known to be on the forefront of providing discounted offers to local users, it has been on a mission in recent months to acquire and offer services that cater to small business owners as a way to increase its overall viability and profit margins.
One of the main examples of this recent expansion by Groupon is the creation of tools like Groupon Scheduler, which was rolled out earlier this week and allows spas, salons and other agencies to schedule and maintain appointments with new and existing customers via the web.