Google Confirms That It Has Acquired Digital Loyalty Startup Punchd

Last Friday our own Alexia Tsotsis broke the news that digital loyalty card startup Punchd was being acquired by Google. The company is still very young but it’s a move that makes sense —  Punchd’s service, which lets customers accrue digital versions of those buy-10-get-1-free cards, could tie in well with Google’s payment products, like Google Wallet. Punchd responded to the article by tweeting that it had not been acquired.

Now, three days later, they’re officially announcing that the six-person startup has indeed been acquired by Google and will be working from the search giant’s Mountain View headquarters going forward.

The cause of the discrepancy: Punchd cofounder Reed Morse says that at the time of our post, the deal had not yet gone through, and that now it has. Okay.

Anyway. Morse did share some other interesting tidbits, including the fact that the Punchd team isn’t simply being absorbed by Google to work on other projects — it’s going to continue working on Punchd full time, and that the service isn’t going anywhere.

He also shared an interesting piece of Punchd’s history. The service got its start last year when Morse and cofounder Grantland Chew (who has since left the company) took a class at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo that focused on Android development — a class that was made possible when Google donated two dozen G1 devices to the school. You can read an article about Punchd from the school newspaper here.

Punchd was a member of the first batch of 500Startups companies.