Mastercard on Monday said that it has completed its purchase of Dynamic Yield from McDonald’s.
The deal is designed to improve Mastercard’s offering of customer engagement and loyalty services to businesses.
For McDonald’s, the sale came just three years after the company spent some $300 million for the technology firm. The sale is an acknowledgement that the burger giant may be better off leaving technology to outside vendors.
The Chicago-based McDonald’s bought Dynamic Yield in 2019. The technology enabled McDonald’s to suggest items based on a customer’s order, time of day or weather, and it was quickly added to the chain’s drive-thru menu boards. Company executives soon touted its ability to drive higher average check.
Yet it was also difficult for the company to determine just how much the program generated sales. News emerged last year that McDonald’s was looking to sell part of Dynamic Yield.
McDonald’s sold Dynamic Yield just months after it sold Apprente, another company that the burger giant bought in 2019 to add more technology to its restaurants. That one provided voice-activated ordering, but McDonald’s never got past the early testing stage before it sold the company to IBM. At the time, both companies said the sale would ultimately speed the implementation of the technology into McDonald’s restaurants.
Dynamic Yield has teams in Tel Aviv, New York City and other parts of the world and works with more than 400 brands, including McDonald’s. It provides personalized recommendations to customers for purchases. Mastercard will add Dynamic Yield to its Data and Services organization, which has more than 2,000 data scientists, engineers and customers that work with customers in 70 countries.
The sale apparently does not end McDonald’s work with Dynamic Yield. The burger giant will further add the technology around the world and into more ordering channels.
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