Morgan Stanley Positive on Groupon Payment Service Launch

Morgan Stanley has published a research report on Groupon

after the company launched its Groupon Payments (GP) service. In the report, Morgan Stanley wrote, "GP's initial aim is to be a payments solution – offering merchants a ‘deal' on their processing fees vs other mobile card readers (hence the small step). However, the vision of integrating a suite of products directly aimed at helping local merchants better manage their businesses presents a significant opportunity (and execution risk). This solution could offer i) analytic tools, ii) streamlined voucher redemption, iii) rewards/ loyalty, iv) scheduling and v) inventory yield management. While there are many other mobile card reader options, we believe GP immediately benefits from its strong mix of both local merchant relationships and active customers. PayPal currently has the most active customers, and the potential to build more merchant relationships via its mid-market solution. Square, on the other hand, has the most merchant relationships, but not many active customers (yet). Groupon doesn't have an international roll-out timeline for GP, while both PayPal and Square have publicly announced their ambitions to grow abroad." Morgan Stanley maintained its Overweight rating on Groupon, which is currently trading up 12.79 percent from Tuesday's $4.69 closing price.