InfoSpace.com Tuesday bought PrivacyBank.com in an effort to offer mobile
users one-click purchasing power.
InfoSpace.com (INSP)
will exchange 148,776 shares of its common stock for all of PrivacyBank.com
outstanding shares, warrants and options. In mid-morning trading, InfoSpace
sold for $205 per share, making the value of the deal $30.5 million.
PrivacyBank.com owns patent-pending technology that provides an automated
process for filling in payment forms,
eliminating the need to enter in payment information per purchase.
Bookselling giant Amazon.com (AMZN)
offers a similar service where its consumers may buy books with a single
click by storing their payment information.
InfoSpace hopes to absorb PrivacyBank.com’s technology to offer wireless
device users instant access to e-tailers. PrivacyBank.com’s e-commerce
technology is the first service that supports privacy preferences of
consumers. Jupiter Communications reports that 63 percent of online users do
not trust Web sites with their information.
In February 1999, Jupiter Communications announced that 27 percent of
surveyed users had abandoned shopping carts because they were disgruntled by
forms. PrivacyBank.com’s e-commerce technology automatically fills online
forms with user information, making Internet shopping easier for consumers
and more profitable for online merchants.
“Wireless devices have the ability to be a strategic part of the commerce
process by connecting the Internet to the consumer wherever they may be,”
said Naveen Jain, InfoSpace chairman and chief executive officer. “By providing this
one-click e-commerce technology on wireless devices, we can now make it
easier for the consumer to purchase goods on the Internet than it is for
them to dial a phone number.”
This service will be integrated with InfoSpace.com’s e-commerce
infrastructure that merges online promotion technologies
with merchants’ existing credit card processing systems.
InfoSpace.com provides services to consumers, merchants and wireless
devices. Its affiliate network consists
of more than 2,100 Web sites.