Harland Clarke Buys Online Coupon Site RetailMeNot For $630 Million

Harland Clarke, a payment and marketing services firm, has acquired RetailMeNot for $630 million in equity.

According to TechCrunch, Harland Clarke will pay $11.60 per share in cash for the online coupon site, about 50 percent higher than the stock’s closing price of $7.75 in early April. The deal is expected to close this quarter.

Harland Clarke will use RetailMeNot to boost the reach of the coupons and promotions managed by Valassis Communications, a direct mailer company it purchased for $1.31 billion in 2013.

“RetailMeNot provides a new global digital channel to distribute our clients’ offers that perfectly complements Valassis’ current digital, mobile, mail and other print networks,” Harland Clarke Chief Executive Victor Nichols said in a statement.

Founded in 2009, this is the second time RetailMeNot has been acquired; in 2010, it was purchased by WhaleShark Media, which then rebranded its entire company to RetailMeNot and also picked up Deals.com, Deals2Buy, Coupon7 and Cheapstingybargains as part of the deal. In 2013, RetailMeNot went public, raising $191 million in its IPO. It will go private after the acquisition by Harland Clarke.

This is the latest deal in the online coupon market: Ebates was acquired by Rakuten for $1 billion in cash in 2014, and LivingSocial, was recently bought by Groupon but the acquisition price was so low that it did not have to be disclosed.