Mastercard to Acquire Dynamic Yield from McDonald's

Mastercard  and McDonald’s today announced an agreement for Mastercard to acquire McDonald’s state-of-the-art personalization platform and decision engine company, Dynamic Yield. Dynamic Yield’s technology is a natural addition to Mastercard’s existing suite of services that help brands deliver more effective and trusted customer experiences across channels.

Sitting across online and offline channels to personalize a consumer’s experience with a brand, Dynamic Yield delivers 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 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.

”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,” said Raj Seshadri, President of Data & Services, Mastercard.

[SoundHound Partners With Mastercard on Voice Tech for Drive-Thru]

Mastercard plays a central role in enabling trusted digital commerce experiences, connecting billions of consumers with millions of merchants and banks around the world safely and securely. With Dynamic Yield’s technology, 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 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.

This builds on the company’s long track record of providing 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.

McDonald’s purchased Dynamic Yield 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. Dynamic Yield’s technology has been deployed to McDonald’s drive-thrus and ordering kiosks in several markets around the world.

The deployment and enhancement of this technology has been an important 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, McDonald’s plans to further scale and integrate Dynamic Yield’s capabilities globally and across ordering channels.

“We’re delighted to continue working with McDonald’s, a longstanding client and proven innovator in this space,” Seshadri continued.

In addition to McDonald’s, a number of merchant and financial services brands already use both Dynamic Yield and existing Mastercard services. Synchrony has worked with both companies on digital customer engagement. “Synchrony works hard every day to deliver simple, tailored and relevant interactions to enhance the consumer experience,” said Jeff Brousseau, Senior Vice President, Performance Marketing, Synchrony. “With Dynamic Yield, we’ve been able to deliver contextual, personalized experiences across the consumer journey. Combining this with the power of Mastercard’s other digital services unlocks additional capabilities to further enrich consumer engagement.”

The transaction is anticipated to close in the first half of 2022, with the strength and talent of the extended Dynamic Yield team ensuring consistency for its customers throughout the process. Upon close, current chief technology officer Ori Bauer will take the helm as CEO. Liad Agmon, current CEO, will stay on in an advisory capacity.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.