2011 seems to be the year that mobile payments go mainstream with everyone from the big mobile carriers and handset manufacturers to scrappy new startups scrambling on to the payments bandwagon.

sQuid and ACT, which together cover 85 percent of the UK’s smartcard-based, contactless payments market, announced a merger today. The new company, Smart Transactions Group is valued at $87 million and expects to generate revenue of $15 million in 2011.

ACT specializes in retail reward programs and transit solutions for public transport. It handles 50 million transit transactions a month. sQuid supplies low-value, pre-paid payment cards for the education and retail sectors. sQuid payment cards are expected to be used in 10 million transactions this year. Neither payment system relies on existing bank or credit card infrastructure.

Smart Transactions Group’s payments business is growing at a double digit monthly rate, while transit transactions are expected to grow 50 percent in 2011. The new company will continue to expand its deployments in the UK and will target emerging markets such as Kenya and the United Arab Emirates. But more interestingly it also plans to launch NFC and mobile phone-based payments and ticketing.

Both companies are privately funded. ACT was formed in 2002 and sQuid in 2005.

Tags: contactless, mobile, payments, smartcard

Companies: Applied Card technologies, squid

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Twitter has finalized its acquisition of immensely popular third-party client TweetDeck, according to a report by CNN Money. The report says the deal is worth more than $40 million in a mix of a cash and stock.

A few weeks ago, TechCrunch reported the first tidbits of the deal. TechCrunch initially cited a $40 million to $50 million range for the purchase, and if the CNN report holds up, TC’s first report will prove accurate.

Just last month UberMedia was supposedly in the process of buying Tweetdeck and had a 30-day exclusive to buy. But negotiations took too long, and that gave Twitter time to propose a better offer.

Tweetdeck is one of the most popular third-party client for Twitter users, with versions available for desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android. It can display real-time tweets, direct messages, Facebook feeds, and more, all from the same interface.

Twitter says it wants to better control the user experience, and control of TweetDeck will certainly make that possible. Before this, Twitter bought iPhone client Tweetie and partnered directly with with photo-hoster TwitPic. The company is also encouraging external developers to focus on something other than straightforward Twitter clients.

The only downside to Twitter purchasing Tweetdeck will be the loss of an innovative, popular client pushing Twitter to add new features and come up with better ideas. On the upside, having Twitter and Tweetdeck on the same team could mean better and faster integration between service and client.

Companies: TweetDeck, Twitter

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Twitter has finalized its acquisition of immensely popular third-party client TweetDeck, according to a report by CNN Money. The report says the deal is worth more than $40 million in a mix of a cash and stock.

A few weeks ago, TechCrunch reported the first tidbits of the deal. TechCrunch initially cited a $40 million to $50 million range for the purchase, and if the CNN report holds up, TC’s first report will prove accurate.

Just last month UberMedia was supposedly in the process of buying Tweetdeck and had a 30-day exclusive to buy. But negotiations took too long, and that gave Twitter time to propose a better offer.

Tweetdeck is one of the most popular third-party client for Twitter users, with versions available for desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android. It can display real-time tweets, direct messages, Facebook feeds, and more, all from the same interface.

Twitter says it wants to better control the user experience, and control of TweetDeck will certainly make that possible. Before this, Twitter bought iPhone client Tweetie and partnered directly with with photo-hoster TwitPic. The company is also encouraging external developers to focus on something other than straightforward Twitter clients.

The only downside to Twitter purchasing Tweetdeck will be the loss of an innovative, popular client pushing Twitter to add new features and come up with better ideas. On the upside, having Twitter and Tweetdeck on the same team could mean better and faster integration between service and client.

Companies: TweetDeck, Twitter

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Liberty Media proposed a deal late Thursday to buy the largest U.S. book retailer Barnes & Noble for $1.02 billion through the purchase of the company’s stock at $17 per share, according to Reuters.

The offer may seem high for an ailing fleet of retail stores that are seeing declines in print book sales, but Barnes & Noble’s Nook tablet and online marketplace could be very valuable to the right buyer.

Barnes & Noble announced it was putting itself up for sale in August 2010 and has since pushed an online commerce strategy to boost sales through its Nook eReader.

Recently, Barnes & Noble rolled out a software update to its Nook Color that transformed it from an eReader to a full fledged tablet computer with apps and support for flash (web videos). Not only does this make the Nook one of the least expensive tablets ($250) running the Android operating system, but it also enables all of Barnes & Noble’s 720 retail stores the potential to become interactive with the online marketplace.

And it’s that interactive potential between physical stores and online Liberty Media would probably like to extend to the corporation’s subsidiaries, which have a presence in media, communication, video, entertainment and online commerce.

The acquisition will go through Liberty Media’s Interactive group, which owns television shopping network QVC and has major stakes in Expedia, Gifts.com, Lockerz, and many others. The acquisition proposal itself has yet to be evaluated by Barnes & Noble’s special committee, according to the company.

Tags: acquisition, books, ereader, Nook

Companies: Barnes & Noble, Liberty Media

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Financial pundit Jim Cramer, host of the CNBC TV show Mad Money, went ballistic today when discussing LinkedIn’s initial public offering, saying that it marked the beginning of a new dot-com bubble that will end as badly as the one 10 years ago.

“This is the most outrageously overvalued, ridiculous thing that I’ve seen since CBS Marketwatch or TheGlobe,” he said.

Cramer also compared the IPO to TheStreet.com, the site that he cofounded. Like LinkedIn, Cramer said, TheStreet was a “sliver” IPO, where only a small number of shares became available on the public market, driving investors into a frenzy. But, the interviewer asked, if LinkedIn’s stock price eventually comes back down to Earth, won’t that lead to more reasonable pricing of other Web companies expected to go public, like Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon? Cramer responded that LinkedIn will probably remain overvalued as long as there’s only a limited amount of stock available.

“We’re going to do another one of these things where we destroy everybody,” Cramer said. He later added, “This is exactly the playbook from 1999.”

So is Cramer right to be worried? Well, I was still in high school during the first dot-com era, but VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall tells me that this doesn’t begin to compare to the hype last time around. Matt also sounds more optimistic about LinkedIn’s long-term potential, as you can see in his post about the IPO.

[via Business Insider]

Tags: bubbles

Companies: linkedin

People: Jim Cramer

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Shares of LinkedIn, a social network for business professionals, ended their debut on the New York Stock Exchange up 109 percent at $94.25 as the first high-profile Web 2.0 initial public offering made a huge splash in public trading.

It’s a sign of the excitement around social networking and its promise, although the results were enough for some people to say it was part of a ridiculous bubble.

That means LinkedIn now has a market cap of around $9 billion — well above the valuation of $4 billion it claimed when it priced the shares of its initial public offering between $42 and $45. Shares of LinkedIn traded as high as $122 earlier today, giving the company an implied valuation as high as $11 billion. LinkedIn’s valuation is the first official record of the hyper-valuations many Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and Facebook have seen in recent years.

LinkedIn’s shares hovered at around $103 for most of the afternoon before finally dipping down below that level of support toward the end of daytime trading. The company also saw a quick decline in its share prices in the ten minutes before the markets closed, dropping as low as $91 before leveling off at around $94 minutes before the final bell. The shares were trading at $94.24 most recently in extended trading.

The company’s stunning debut on the stock market could end up creating additional chatter about whether several Web 2.0 companies are overvalued. LinkedIn’s closing share price and valuation mean the company is worth somewhere north of 36 times its revenue for 2010, which was around $243 million. There’s also the chance that share prices of LinkedIn could turn south over the next several days, like shares of Chinese social networking company RenRen. That company turned out to be a flop on public trading markets and has fallen below the IPO price of $14 to $13.75 it saw earlier this month.

A number of highly successful Web 2.0 companies like Facebook and Zynga — and LinkedIn — have seen ballooning valuations as investors have rushed to snatch up as many shares as possible ahead of what could be some of the most high-profile tech IPOs to date. Facebook, for example, was valued at $50 billion after its most recent round of funding — though it is trading at a higher price than that on secondary markets.

LinkedIn is based in Mountain View, Calif., and has more than 1,000 employees. The company, founded by Reid Hoffman (pictured above), is a business network that’s designed to help professionals connect with other potential business contacts and get a “warm introduction” through people in their network.

Tags: initial public offering, internet bubble, IPO, social networking, valuation

Companies: linkedin, RenRen

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Zynga said today it is acquiring social game maker DNA Games. That’s the 14th acquisition Zynga has made in 12 months.

Zynga is in a race to acquire talent to make more social games for Facebook (where it has more than 250 million monthly active users) and other platforms such as mobile.

DNA Games was founded in 2009 by Jon Lee and Shaun Haase. They have created hits such as Casino City, Slot City and Bar World. Zynga says it will use their expertise in creating next-generation games. Lee will serve as the general manager of the studio, which will report to Mark Skaggs, senior vice president of product development.

Tags: Casino City

Companies: DNA Games, Zynga

People: Jon Lee

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Tradeshift calls itself a social network for business but its main service is currently free, web-based invoicing. The company just landed $7M in funding from Notion Capital.

Notion Capital is the venture fund of the founders of MessageLabs, which was sold to Symantec for $700 million in 2008. Tradeshift previously received seed funding from PayPal.

The company was started by a group of developers who created the e-invoicing system for the Danish government. 50,000 businesses currently use the invoicing service to send, receive and manage e-invoices, purchase orders and credit notes. Customers include the UK’s National Health Service and the Irish and French governments. Tradeshift allows customers like these to receive electronic invoices from all of their suppliers. Customers can also leave comments and status updates on invoices so suppliers don’t have to call a customer and ask where their money is.

Tradeshift is free and will monetize its platform via applications and financial services for users. Later this month the company plans to launch an app store delivering a range of business apps like credit checking suppliers, accounting integration and time sheet invoice creation, developed both by its own team and the Tradeshift developer community.

Although electronic invoicing has been around for a long time, Tradeshift claims that no other company provides free invoicing that is entirely web-based. Invoicing companies typically charge per transaction.

Tradeshift was founded in 2009, has 30 employees and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Tags: e-invoice, invoice

Companies: Notion Capital, Tradeshift

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Money keeps pouring into a new wave of e-commerce startups. The latest news: A big $40 million round for fashion deals website ShoeDazzle.

While a number of companies are trying to add a social element to online shopping, Santa Monica, Calif.-based ShoeDazzle sounds a little more traditional — in some ways, it’s a fashion-focused, personalized spin on the book of the month club that I belonged to in high school. Users fill out a style profile, then the website recommends different shoes, handbags, and jewelry. They can purchase one item each month for $39.95, and if nothing grabs their fancy they can skip the month or request alternate items. Users also earn credits for making purchases and inviting friends.

The company was founded by celebrity Kim Kardashian and LegalZoom co-founder Brian Lee and has 3 million subscribers.

ShoeDazzle has now raised $60 million in funding. The new round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, the firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz that has quickly become one of the biggest names in venture capital. Existing investors Polaris Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated.

Companies: Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, ShoeDazzle

People: Ben Lee, e commerce, Kim Kardashian

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Thredup, an online exchange for children’s clothes, just announced that it has raised $7 million in a second round of funding.

The site is aimed at parents who want to find a more economical/less wasteful way to update the wardrobe after their children have outgrown their clothes. So if when you’re looking for new clothes, you go to the site, browse different boxes based on clothing type, brand, size, and so on, then choose the box you want. In return, you need to pay $5 (plus shipping costs) and also add your own box of clothes that your child doesn’t wear anymore to Thredup’s listings.

The San Francisco company launched about a year ago. Thredup says that its users will swap their millionth item sometime this month, and that 1,000 new moms are joining the site every day. The new funding will be spent on improving the core product and also adding new swap items like toys, books, and maternity items.

The round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Trinity Ventures and former eBay CEO Brian Swette. Thredup has now raised $8.7 million.

Tags: clothing, kids

Companies: Redpoint Ventures, Thredup, Trinity Ventures

People: Brian Swette

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals