Meta Wins EU Approval for Kustomer Deal With Access Pledge

Aoife White, Bloomberg News

Meta Platforms signage outside the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., on Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Facebook Inc. is re-christening itself Meta Platforms Inc., decoupling its corporate identity from the eponymous social network mired in toxic content, and highlighting a shift to an emerging computing platform focused on virtual reality. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Meta Platforms Inc. won European Union approval to buy customer-service platform Kustomer after it pledged to grant access to competitors.

Meta will help rival customer-service software providers to access its messaging channels and will make sure they get any updates or extra features for WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger, the European Commission said in an emailed statement on Thursday. The pledge targets business active in Europe, lasts 10 years and will be monitored.

The EU investigated but didn’t find evidence that the deal would harm online display advertising or that the data Meta would acquire would hurt rival advertising services.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has been subjected to tough scrutiny of even small takeovers, falling foul of a regulatory crackdown partly prompted by game-changing deals such as the 2012 acquisition of Instagram. The U.K. blocked Meta’s bid for Giphy last year.

“We are pleased with the European Commission’s Kustomer merger clearance. It shows that our acquisition of Kustomer will create more choice” in the “competitive” customer relations management market, Meta said in a statement.

Although the Kustomer deal doesn’t meet the EU’s usual revenue limits for a review, regulators used a new procedure to examine it.

Facebook made the deal, valued at more than $1 billion, to bolster efforts to monetize its messaging business, which is expanding to customer-service products that help companies interact with people via instant chat apps. WhatsApp currently makes money by charging large businesses to message customers on the platform

Germany is separately reviewing the transaction after refusing to join other EU member countries in asking the European Commission to look at it. It has a Feb. 11 deadline to rule. The U.K. approved the purchase unconditionally last year.

(Updates with Facebook comment in fifth paragraph.)