Paypal acquires mobile payment company

Online payments provider PayPal has announced its first acquisition since its split from eBay, revealing that it has acquired mobile payment start-up Modest.

Modest’s technology will allow consumers to make purchases in apps by giving merchants the ability to provide buy buttons for their products, similar to Pinterest’s Buyable Pins (which actually uses PayPal’s Braintree platform.)

A senior PayPal spokesman said that the deal represents what PayPal calls contextual commerce, and the company is confident that this is becoming the new frontier for commerce.

“For consumers it will mean seamless, simpler and safer ways to buy the things they want, anywhere they discover them,” Bill Ready said in a statement.

Modest was founded in 2012 by Harper Reed, who served as chief technology officer for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, and Dylan Richard, who was lead engineer for the campaign.