As has been said before, Japanese firm Rakuten might be the biggest firm you have never heard of. The company is a real player when it comes to all kinds of different technologies, including VoIP and mobile VoIP. Last week, the firm made itself even a little bigger with the acquisition of Ebates for the price tag (News - Alert) of $1 billion. The deal follows weeks of rumors that this particular purchase would be going down. The money they’ve paid for Ebates is roughly the same amount of money they paid to acquire mobile messaging app Viber in February.

The money being invested in Ebates by Rakuten means the larger firm will hold 100 percent of Ebates outstanding voting stock, meaning it has full control over how Ebates operates moving forward. The San Francisco-based Ebates operates a website that offers its users the ability to get cash back when they go shopping on more than 2,600 different websites. The sites aren’t small, unknown web addresses either, as Amazon is among the bunch that can earn users money back.

Ebates has been popular enough that users spent more than $2.2 billion shopping through the site. The acquisition by Rakuten means that the firm has further improved its standing in the growing United States e-commerce market. More importantly, the firm now has a new entry point into that market. The acquisiotn also allows Rakuten the ability to offer these kinds of rebates and discounts back in Japan without having to launch its own site brand new.

Ebates is no stranger to working outside the United States. The company has dedicated sites that operate in South Korea, China, Russia and Canada. The firm will apparently also continue to operate from San Francisco once the deal has been closed. The acquisition is expected to be official by the end of October.