The Daily Download: PureCar Acquires truPayments

Steve Greenfield of Automotive Ventures highlights the technology deals of the day in this segment of the Daily Download.

Automotive Ventures is the resource for automotive technology entrepreneurs and financial and strategic acquirers. The company, founded in 2014, offers fundraising, growth strategy, and transaction guidance.

Today we have another deal in the Digital Retailing space, as PureCars announced its acquisition of truPayments in a move meant to solidify its commitment to helping dealers thrive by expanding its marketing technology and services suite to include personalized payment shopping. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.

PureCars’ tools are designed to optimize media buys to achieve lower ad costs per unit sold and per RO, resulting in increased profitability for dealerships. In parallel, truPayments’ solutions are geared to convert shoppers earlier in the buying process, further reducing advertising costs for dealerships, while providing an improved buying experience for their customers.

PureCars is backed by Diversis Capital Partners and Stage 1 Ventures. The company highlighted the acquisition of truPayments will add even more payment data to PureCars’ data warehouse, enabling dealers to serve payment-relevant ads to shoppers, and convert those shoppers to buyers, earlier in their buying journey, further reducing dealer ad costs per unit sold.

PureCars said dealers will be able to more quickly and efficiently match in-market shoppers with their inventory at exactly the right payment. Furthermore, while the industry grapples with inventory shortages, pairing vehicle acquisition campaigns with an accurate trade tool that quickly shows consumers the equity in their trade will give dealers a more profitable, less competitive vehicle acquisition option to auctions, which can eat into margins with transport and other associated fees.

The whole digital retailing space has been red hot this past month, as we witnessed Roadster selling to CDK Global, Gubagoo selling to Reynolds & Reynolds, and Darwin Automotive selling to JD Power. We expect the Digital Retailing space to continue to be active in the coming months, from an M&A standpoint.

Congratulations goes out to Tarry Shebesta and the whole TruPayments team!