Apple said to be buying The Fancy to get its general e-commerce business going

Looking to get its general e-commerce business running, Apple is rumored to be buying The Fancy. With over 400 million iTunes customers with credit cards on file, Apple would be able to immediately be a power in this space. The Passbook app coming in iOS 6 won't allow users to make purchases directly from their Apple iPhone or Apple iPad, but an acquisition of The Fancy by Apple would change that. The Fancy allows users to "post the tings they love," and is described as part blog, part magazine and part bookmarking tool. Using The Fancy, account holders can view items for sale and purchase them with a click. It sounds like it might be just the thing the Cupertino based firm needs to expands its e-commerce business.

The Fancy has received some attention thanks to the former Facebook and Twitter co-founders behind the app. It's last funding round valued the company at $100 million. Kanye West recently opened an account and sent a tweet picturing a visit he made to The Fancy's New York offices. Apple CEO Tim Cook also opened an account and has spoken with The Fancy's CEO Jim Einhorn. Often compared to Pinterest, The Fancy doesn't have as many users but the 20-person startup is further along when it comes to getting users to make a transaction. The company takes a 10% cut out of each purchase.

While an acquisition of The Fancy by Apple is pure speculation at the moment, Apple has successfully purchased startups and integrated them into its devices. One example of this is the purchase in 2011 that led to Apple's acquisition of the Siri Voice Activated Personal Assistant, a major feature on the Apple iPhone 4S.

source: AppleInsider