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The Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has its eye on America.

On Tuesday, the company agreed to buy Ebates, an online rebate site in the United States that allows people to earn cash back when buying goods at stores like Macy’s and Home Depot. The price was $1 billion.

The acquisition is the latest international move by Hiroshi Mikitani, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Rakuten, whose businesses also include the Rakuten online marketplace, a travel agency, credit cards and a Japanese baseball team called the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

The spate of deals, including the $900 million acquisition of the Internet messaging application Viber this year, comes as Rakuten tries to reduce its reliance on the company’s home market.

The purchase of Ebates, which is based in San Francisco and which provides cash-back services for about 2,600 retailers and generated revenue of $167 million last year, will give Rakuten a beachhead in the United States e-commerce market, where companies like Amazon and eBay are dominant.

Rakuten, based in Tokyo, said the deal would also help to expand the company’s existing loyalty program in Japan, where people can earn credits online toward discounts on future purchases.

‘‘The combination of Rakuten and Ebates is entirely unique and will revolutionize e-commerce,’’ Mr. Mikitani said in a statement on Tuesday.

Analysts questioned whether the Japanese e-commerce company would be able to break into an American market with entrenched competitors.

When rumors of a potential deal for Ebates first surfaced on Monday, for example, Rakuten’s share price fell 4.2 percent. The company’s stock fell an additional 1.3 percent by the close of trading in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Founded in 1997, Rakuten has taken steps in recent years to expand its footprint outside Japan with a series of prominent investments and acquisitions, among them the purchase of a stake in the Canadian e-book maker Kobo in 2011 and an investment in the American virtual scrapbook site Pinterest in 2012.

In July, Rakuten also joined forces with the Malaysian airline AirAsia to start a low-cost carrier in Japan. Rakuten said it was buying an 18 percent stake in the venture in an effort to expand its existing travel services.

Yet the company’s most significant acquisition to date was the $900 million deal for Viber, which competes with other Internet messaging services like WhatsApp — which was acquired by Facebook for up to $19 billion — and WeChat of China.

Many of the world’s largest technology companies, including Alibaba of China, are investing billions of dollars to expand their Internet messaging capabilities, allowing users to send smartphone messages or make phone calls for a fraction of the cost of traditional services.

Viber says it has roughly 400 million users worldwide, a figure that has doubled over the last seven months. Rakuten has previously said it planned to use the service to connect people to its existing e-commerce services.