Gifting Service Loop Commerce Adds PayPal As An Investor, Bringing Its Series A To Over $12M

After closing its Series A in early November, gifting startup Loop Commerce has added an investment from PayPal to the round. While Loop Commerce co-founder and CEO Roy Erez would not disclose the exact amount of PayPal’s investment, the Series A was previously $7 million and now stands a little north of $12 million. So you do the math.

Loop Commerce’s list of investors already includes eBay CTO Mark Carges, Don Katz of Audible and Amazon, Magento CEO Roy Rubin, former Toys “R” Us SVP Michael Scharff, Oren Zeev, Chegg CTO Chuck Geiger, and Novel TMT. With this latest investment, PayPal VP of Global Strategic Development Don Kingsborough will serve as PayPal’s observer on Loop Commerce’s board.

As a B2B2C service, Loop Commerce’s aim is to find a place in the broader ecommerce landscape by integrating with retailers as an alternate checkout flow. When a shopper wants to gift an item to a friend, they go through Loop’s checkout process, sending a notification to the recipient asking for shipping, sizing, and color preferences.

For consumers, it means giving and receiving gifts, especially clothing, that will actually see some use. For retailers, it could cut down on the cost associated with returns while delivering extra user behavior data.

Loop Commerce has been in private beta since its launch in November, and it’s taking its time getting to market. Erez said the team hasn’t set a date to open up the service to retailers, although they have added merchants to their test roster over the last month (they’re not disclosing those names, either).

“It’s not a consumer app where you get some feedback and make it happen. We built it from the ground up to go to the largest retailers out there,” Erez said.

While Erez said it is too soon to comment on the nature of the startup’s relationship with PayPal, we’ll be watching to see how that informs Loop’s product.

In the past, PayPal has invested in the Japanese personal finance app Moneytree; restaurant ordering platform OLO; BillFloat, the service bill payment startup that was incubated by PayPal and Venrock; and mFoundry, which sold to FIS early this year for $120 million.

[Image: Flickr / Hades2k]