On Monday morning, Rakuten Advertising shared an email with partners, notifying them that PayPal’s Honey browser extension had been “terminated” from the network and removed from existing affiliate programmes.
The dispute follows accusations from industry commentators and professionals that PayPal Honey uses a ‘defeat device’ to detect user type and selectively bypass stand down policy.
Rakuten Advertising declined to comment on the move. PayPal has now shared an exclusive response with Hello Partner.
A spokesperson said, “PayPal and Rakuten are longstanding partners. We are aware of the actions taken regarding PayPal Honey and are working with them on a resolution.”
They continued: “The code causing this behavior has been identified and no longer has an impact. The code was implemented prior to PayPal’s acquisition, and appears to affect less than 0.1% of Honey’s traffic.”
When asked to elaborate on what this means, PayPal explained that Honey supports “billions” of shopping trips a year, and this percentage reflects how much of that was impacted by the code.
The spokesperson said that the code was only recently discovered by PayPal, and upon being made aware of it, the company has deactivated it.
The spokesperson added, “PayPal is committed to ensuring a fair ecosystem, and we fully support guidelines and principles for the entire ecosystem that will help all industry players thrive while delivering value to our various customers.”
These guidelines include enabling attribution and stand down policies.
Mark Grether, SVP and GM of PayPal Ads, responded, “We greatly appreciate the partnerships we have with the publishers, networks, and advertisers. We regret the impact this situation has had on our partners and look forward to working together for the betterment of the entire industry.”
