Mastercard (NYSE: MA) and McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) have announced an agreement for Mastercard to acquire McDonald’s personalization platform and decision engine company, Dynamic Yield.
As mentioned in the announcement, Dynamic Yield’s tech is a valuable addition to Mastercard’s extensive suite of services that assist brands with offering more effective and trusted customer experiences across different channels.
Sitting across online and offline channels to “personalize a consumer’s experience with a brand,” Dynamic Yield provides individualized product recommendations, offers and content “based on a range of factors, including past purchases, page views, time of day, current store traffic and trending products.”
The announcement also mentioned that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform uses advanced AI and other technologies to “support 400+ brands across the retail, financial services, travel and restaurant industries, among others.”
Raj Seshadri, President of Data & Services, Mastercard, stated:
”The notion of going into a store or opening a webpage to find an experience perfectly tailored to you is no longer farfetched. It’s a reality that more brands are deploying and more consumers expect. With Dynamic Yield’s expertise and our scale and relationships, we’ll be able to bring the connections between the end consumer and our customers to new heights.”
Mastercard serves a key role in enabling trusted digital commerce experiences, connecting numerous consumers with various merchants and banks across the globe safely and securely.
With Dynamic Yield’s tech, Mastercard will be able to “help its customers and partners meet consumers’ growing demand for a more personalized experience, no matter where they shop or do business,” the update explained.
The creation of a unified consumer engagement and loyalty hub will “further extend the value of Mastercard’s network to deliver digital services for payments and beyond,” the announcement added.
As noted in a release, this builds on the firm’s track record of offering data-driven loyalty, analytics and marketing services, “rooted in focused data responsibility principles.”
This includes the SessionM merchant loyalty platform and Test & Learn (APT) experimentation software, the update confirmed.
McDonald’s acquired Dynamic Yield back in 2019, “becoming one of the first brands to integrate decision technology into its restaurants.”
Under McDonald’s ownership, Dynamic Yield “doubled its revenue and expanded its customer base across verticals,” the announcement revealed.
To date, Dynamic Yield’s tech has reportedly been “deployed to McDonald’s drive-thrus and ordering kiosks in several markets around the world.”
The deployment and enhancement of this tech has been a vital component of McDonald’s Accelerating the Arches growth strategy “under which the brand has also prioritized improving ordering experiences, introduced a global loyalty program and expanded its delivery footprint.”
The acquisition by Mastercard will “strengthen unique, existing synergies across McDonald’s digital engagement experiences currently powered by SessionM and Test & Learn.”
In addition to McDonald’s, there are several other merchant and financial services brands that are using Dynamic Yield and existing Mastercard services. Synchrony has “worked with both companies on digital customer engagement,” the announcement revealed.
The transaction is expected to be finalized during H1 2022, with the strength and talent of the extended Dynamic Yield team “ensuring consistency for its customers throughout the process.”
Upon close, current CTO Ori Bauer will take the helm as CEO. Liad Agmon, current CEO, “will stay on in an advisory capacity,” the update confirmed.
The transaction is currently “subject to customary closing conditions” and the terms of the agreement “were not disclosed.”