Daily deal site Groupon snapped up a couple of companies late last week to bolster its mobile capabilities. Groupon announced on Friday it has bought location-based tech company Hyperpublic and mobile commerce and payment company Kima Labs. No details were disclosed for either purchase
Kima, a Silicon Valley start-up founded by a couple of Amazon.com alums, is the company behind TapBuy, a mobile discount app that collects local deals and then makes it easy for consumers to buy the deals via their mobile devices using a "single touch" feature. The company's other product is Barcode Hero, a barcode-reading price comparison app.
New York City-based Hyperpublic offers databases that aggregate location information from various sources on things like discounts or items for sale that can be integrated by developers into their apps.
No word on how Groupon will integrate either company into its core daily deal service, though according to a statement on the Barcode Hero site, that app will be wound down almost immediately. In a statement to TechCrunch, Kima said its TapBuy app will be phased out over time as well.
