Japanese Ecommerce giant Rakuten has acquired US Ecomemrce application developer Slice as part of its move towards global expansion, primarily the US.
Slice is an Ecommerce mobile application which hunts a user’s inbox to find data on shipping tracking information. The app also aggregates receipts form online and offline purchases, and also sport a price drop tracker for items that may be eligible for price adjustments.
With data aggregated by Slice, Rakuten, which is also an initial investor in slice, will acquire a massive data base of how US shoppers shop. They can tell how and which items are delivered, if shoppers are in fact going ahead with payment adjustments, as well as observe general shopping habits.
“We have a vision to grow our business in the U.S. There’s tremendous value in this technology to any company doing business online and it all comes down to customer data,” said Yaz Iida, CEO of Rakuten Marketing.
The Slice application is free of charge to users, and the Startup makes its money by charging websites for access to customer data. The company also developed a Japanese version of Slice to coincide with Rakuten’s local mobile application, and planned for release later this year.
According to Slice CEO Scott Brady, Slice would also be able to sell the information it learns to other firms to improve their customer experience, particularly Fintech companies looking to understand more about credit-card based purchases and habits.
This marks Rakuten's second move recently at global expansion, after it announced it will be re-branding UK based Play.com to Rakuten.co.uk.
