14 ms·

PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

326 points by paraschopra 13y ago

Vvector 13y ago
"Braintree" not "Briantree"
- BetaCygni 13y ago
  Maybe it's because the CEO of braintree is called "Bill Ready". Heh.
jwblackwell 13y ago
Well this has put me off ever using them.
- sanswork 13y ago
  Thats ok. I'm pretty sure they won't exist for much longer now anyhow.
confluence 13y ago
Anyone got stats on the acquisition split between owning parties (founders/investors/employees)?
- patio11 13y ago
  People always ask for this, and the answer is always going to be "We won't disclose that." Publishing the cap table is invariably going to be net negative for the people on it. To the limited extent that having rough numbers helps improve your estimation of what the payoff matrix is if you build a business to where it is worth $800 million: typically, the founders would split several hundred million, most employees would get $X0,000 to $Y00,000, and exceptionally early employees plus key executives (CEO, etc) walk away with a few million. The remainder (several hundred million) goes to the investors. Braintree's numbers might be different due to their bootstrapped pre-funding trajectory or due to choices made by the founders, but ultimately their numbers are their numbers.
madaxe 13y ago
Imagine how upset they'll be when they thought they were buying Braintree, but got some guy called Brian's tree.
- jwblackwell 13y ago
  It appears Mr Brian Tree is actually an actor - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871672/ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871672/
- Peroni 13y ago
  I initially thought they bought a town - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braintree,_Essex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braintree,_Essex
chuckd1356 13y ago
Congrats to Stripe for all the new users!
- pcunite 13y ago
  Wow, I was looking at Braintree when I found Stripe last year. I wanted something truly different from PayPal for my customers. Looks like I made the right call.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  Hah. The real lesson if course is no place is really a safe port.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  I suspect this is very good timing on the part of Braintree. With Stripe now actively rolling out across more than North America and with other low-overhead payment services starting to appear as well, Braintree were effectively trapped in no-man's-land with their existing business model. For start-ups and small businesses, they were way too heavy for even basic stuff like signing up compared to the new competition. For larger, established businesses, direct merchant accounts and other banking facilities are probably worth the hassle given the better margins available. If I were them and had an out like this, I'd take it in a heartbeat, too.
- jgalt212 13y ago
  I heard that. As I've said before, people revere the PayPal mafia, but revile PayPal. As it's been said by others here, this is certainly good for Stripe because more than a few Braintree customers will flock their way to avoid PayPal, but it also creates opportunities for other upstarts in this arena. That being said, there is a certain amount of lock-in for these products, so while it's relatively easy for a business to transition their new users/payers from Braintree to Stripe/others, it's pretty painful to transition existing users/payers out of Braintree as all existing users would need to re-key their CC numbers and billing addresses.
  - szaronsj 13y ago
chromaton 13y ago
This has put me off of Braintree and on to Stripe, but not for the reasons you might suspect. You see, I still want to take PayPal payments from my customers who prefer it. But it doesn't seem like a good business to have all my eggs in one basket, and using a competing payment system gives me the ability to switch PayPal off if they try any shenanigans.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  That's why I only code against Spreedly [1] instead of directly against any payment processor. One API instead of 53, switch processors just by changing a variable, and you can securely store customers' payment info without locking yourself into any processor's vaulting solution either. 1: https://spreedly.com/ https://spreedly.com/
  - mithras 13y ago
    But instead you are reliant on Spreedly. Looks interesting though.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      Which is a much better thing to be reliant on. Payment processors are in the risk business -- becoming a risky account to underwrite, or their making a mistake in evaluating the risk, means you lose your account, any money that hasn't yet made it to your bank, and any customer info you have stored. Because the processor bears all the risk for chargebacks and bankruptcies of its merchants, it's an extremely thin margin business. Spreedly is in the secure API business. They don't care much about the health of your business, the risk associated with your transactions, or anything else the processors care about. They just have to pass around messages and get paid a fee every time they do. It's a fat margin business. The risk of losing a Spreedly account is much lower than losing a payment account. The risk of Spreedly suddenly going out of business is much lower than the risk of a small merchant account provider/reseller going out of business. And if you choose to stop relying on Spreedly, they'll hand you all your customer data (securely) to take elsewhere, which most gateways with card vaulting refuse to do. It's not a choice of who to commit to, it's freedom from vendor lock-in.
shrikant 13y ago
Looks like Braintree will have to change all their "we're not PayPal!" marketing now.
- fredley 13y ago
  As a Braintree customer I am a little worried. I went with them for a number of reasons, but one of the big ones was the fact that they're not PayPal.
  - vladsanchez 13y ago
    http://www.dwolla.com http://www.dwolla.com
  - jfoster 13y ago
    PayPal likely purchased them because they aspire to be more like Braintree.
    - ihsw 13y ago
      Few things could qualify so wholeheartedly as a crock of shit, but your statement is one of them.
      - jfoster 13y ago
        I should've supported my assertion with this: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-customer-service/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-custom... If you still think I'm wrong, please be constructive about it.
    - doubt_me 13y ago
      Is there any evidence of this? Besides 800m in cash
      - jfoster 13y ago
        David Marcus has previously acknowledged that PayPal needs to improve: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-customer-service/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-custom...
hpvic03 13y ago
In the long run I suspect that this will be a huge win for Stripe.
- pain_perdu 13y ago
  agreed.
  - Ecio78 13y ago
    If Paypal doesn't buy them too.. according to this article[1] the valuation is 500m, so less than what PP paid for Braintree.. [1] http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/brothers-vow-not-to-sell-stripe-web-firm-valued-at-500m-29544203.html http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/brothers-vow-not-to-sel...
    - Fuxy 13y ago
      As usual old and awful services survive by buying out the better competition. Survival of the richest not the one with better service.
    - rafski 13y ago
      Doesn't this article say specifically Stripe is not for sale? I don't know if there are other investors than Y Combinator though, there might be one that will push for a sale.
      - random42 13y ago
        At the right price, everything is for sale. Not let anyone tell you otherwise...
      - pc 13y ago
        > I don't know if there are other investors than Y Combinator though, there might be one that will push for a sale. We do have other investors, but (luckily) they're as uninterested in selling as we are. We've always been clear with them that we want to build this for the long-term.
fideloper 13y ago
Did they want Venmo for it's ability to make payments online, or to kill competition that lets people give/receive payments "for free".
joshuak 13y ago
We were just about to add payments to our site, and Braintree was high on the list to checkout. Any other suggestions in addition to Stripe? -edit- This seems like a good list: http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com
- dangrossman 13y ago
  If you do at least $3-5k/month in transactions, a real merchant account from a bank/ISO/MSP. I pay $0.05 + 0.04% markup over interchange. Even after the monthly and gateway (Authorize.net) fees, that's around 2%, compared to Stripe's 2.9% or PayPal's 2.2% (I qualify for their merchant rate discount). Amex cards are the only ones I pay more for by not doing a flat rate. [By coding against Spreedly, it's possible to do things like send all Visa and MasterCard charges to Authorize.net, and all Amex charges to PayPal for the flat rate, without ever seeing the cardholder data myself. I don't though.]
  - ashray 13y ago
    I'm more interested in micropayments but this interchange stuff seems a bit complicated. How would a $2 payment work out with interchange included ? I mean, what fees would apply for a $2 credit card payment ?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - jeffasinger 13y ago
      So you'd have to pay interchange, plus whatever your processor charges on top of that, which will depend on them, and volume. You can definitely shop around a little bit, there's probably several local people who can talk you through it and bring you some offers to the table from various processors, but also get a quote from people like TSYS, First Data, and Chase Paymentech directly. I'm remembering fees varying from $.05 to $0.10 and 0.10% to 0.15% on top of interchange. The visa interchange rates are available at (1) to give you an idea. You're mostly interested in the eCommerce categories probably, so you'll be paying 1.80 to 1.95% plus $0.10 on top of whatever you're paying from you're processor for credit cards, debit cards are cheaper. Many people that do micropayments will try to combine some transactions together, in order to save money. That said, you might be interested in paypal micropayments (2), as they only charge $0.05 + 5%, which for a $2 transaction, is a big savings. 1: http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-reimbursement-fees-april2013.pdf http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-... 2: https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropaym...
Demiurge 13y ago
Sight, will there ever be a PayPal alternative?
- joeblau 13y ago
  I've suggested Stripe, but I know they have some geolocation restrictions.
harel 13y ago
We are just about to start using BrainTree, for the only reason that they are not PayPal...
- Kliment 13y ago
  Then switch now before they have your customer data siloed and it's too late.
- esw 13y ago
  I've been a Braintree customer for several years and have been really happy with the service and support, but if I were in your shoes I'd probably take a hard look at Stripe.
janlukacs 13y ago
We've just signed up with braintree the other day trying to flee PayPal (somehow i thought the deal won't go through). Let's hope for the best :)
sailfast 13y ago
While I like to see more competition in the marketplace, I think this is a smart move for Paypal and also a big milestone for a Chicago startup exit. Congratulations are in order to the Braintree team.
JohnGB 13y ago
Time to look for a new payment provider. Braintree stood out with their amazing service and support. Paypal stand out for their complete lack of competent service and support.
m4tthumphrey 13y ago
Ouch. I feel for Braintree customers. I expect many of them chose them primarily because they were not PayPal.
dcc1 13y ago
Paypal will kill it, PAYPAL are the absolute worst company in the world and terrible to for any new businesses who endup having their money "held" for ridiculous amounts of time, and no customer support.
- jfoster 13y ago
  Why do you think PayPal bought them? It probably wasn't solely for the userbase, right?
  - droopyEyelids 13y ago
    My take: 1) Braintree is a dog fart compared to paypal. They certainly weren't bought for the user base. (although, their size probably probably affected the choice between stripe and bt) 2) David Marcus was acquihired from a team of 5 (a 'real startup') and has been working to startupify paypal. [1] Perhaps he thinks Braintree could be an example to the rest of the company. 3) Venmo is the most successful peer to peer mobile payments app. Peer to peer mobile payments will transition into wallet, and then banking. It's an important position to own. 4) Paypal's customer base is 'aging' like yahoo's has been. Braintree has a younger, hipper market segment (than paypal). 5) Stripe is cooler than braintree, but another order of magnitude smaller, plus they don't have the white-glove support of Braintree. From what I've heard, DM is continuously frustrated by Paypal's support. I believe BT's support is seen as a learning opportunity for PayPal. Also, Braintree was able to successfully copy all Stripe's innovations. Braintree has large, mature intl. presence, too. Not an expert but thats my attempt to be 'objective' [1]http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-how-david-marcus-is-dismantling-paypal-to-save-it/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-h...
    - Flenser 13y ago
      Venmo is also used by Simple[1] [2] so it's already in banking. That may have influenced things. If Simple get big then Paypal could end up processing a significant amount of banking transactions. [1] https://simple.com/ https://simple.com/ [2] http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/20/mobile-payments-are-one-third-of-braintrees-business/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/20/mobile-payments-are-one-thi...
artursapek 13y ago
I wonder how much Paypal has badgered Stripe for an acquisition.
- BallinBige 13y ago
  Braintree is more developed as a business
cvburgess 13y ago
Although I am sticking with Stripe, I hope that they leverage features like Venmo with PayPal's (rather large) user base - mobile payments are terrible as it stands. It'll be interesting to see if large partners (GitHub, AirBnB, etc) stay onboard through the transition or if they are coerced by competitors.
tmuir 13y ago
I'm always amused when I read the statements from newly acquired companies. They refuse to call it what it is, a purchase, and instead frame it as an alignment, a partnership, anything that allows them to distract from the fact that they are no longer autonomous.
- AhtiK 13y ago
  One hardly ever hears the term "takeover" these days :)
  - Fuxy 13y ago
    That's probably because we all know what takeover means so they try to describe it and dace around what it actually is to make it sound better. It's how you say it not what it is although by my book it's still the same damn thing.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
AhtiK 13y ago
Title is a bit misleading, Braintree is not acquired by Paypal. 1. The transaction is planned between eBay and Braintree. 2. At this point eBay has plans to acquire Braintree (agreed to acquire).
- jfoster 13y ago
  Yeah, but Braintree's CEO is reporting into David Marcus, and all of the quotes from the eBay side are talking about PayPal. For all intents and purposes, Braintree has been acquired by PayPal.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
geori 13y ago
WOW! Didn't see that one coming.
Ixiaus 13y ago
Boy, everyone is so negative about the purchase on here! Braintree's customer base is far too large at this point for PayPal to just shut it down; that would be terrible PR because Braintree is critical to many businesses at this point. It's also not that easy to just go rip out one processor for another on a huge legacy code base. PayPal would be making things worse for themselves if they did that and this purchase, is IMHO, an attempt to make things better for them and to bring them into the modern software world. I'm sure they also acquired Braintree for their engineers!
- AhtiK 13y ago
  Braintree processes ~11b/year. Paypal ~$145b/y. This year Paypal expects to process on mobile twice as much as Braintree is processing as a whole. The margins in this business are very small, .9% transaction fees on 11b are not that huge. Where Braintree misses the opportunity is gathering better for young startups that are in the early growth phase. 100 EUR monthly minimum on .10c/trx fees is not easy to digest in the beginning.
  - gaadd33 13y ago
    Where did you hear that Braintree is going to a 100EUR monthly minimum?
    - AhtiK 13y ago
      https://www.braintreepayments.com/ https://www.braintreepayments.com/ "Interchange +.9% + €.10 per transaction. €100 per month minimum • Everything included • No additional fees". This is probably shown only to EU visitors. I also confirmed this with braintreepayments support and their reply was: "The €100 is a monthly minimum based on a per transaction fee of €0.10. For example, if your first month of transaction charges are €68, you would need to pay an additional €32 to 'top up' the amount. Interchange + 0.90% is not part of the calculation. Only the per transaction fee of €0.10 is used to calculate the €100 monthly minimum." When I switch the site to "United States" it reads: "2.9% + $.30 per transaction. No additional fees • No minimums • Everything included" Extremely annoyed by seeing this minimum applied only to the EU countries!
nhangen 13y ago
It's disappointing, because among that market segment, Braintree is the only one that offers phone support, and for that, I fancy them over Stripe, Balanced, and others. That said, maybe now with Paypal support, they will reverse their stance on crowdfunding. If not, I'm desperate for a professional payment processor that doesn't ask me to send an email if I have an issue.
- yogo 13y ago
  Actually that's one of the things that annoyed me. For quite a while when you try to login at braintreegateway and you clicked Forgot Password it asked you to call them. There are somethings phone calls are good for and I don't think resetting a password is one of them. Maybe they had a good reason for that. And why the hell doesn't "braintreegateway.com" redirect to the right place?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- mvboeke 13y ago
  Michael from Braintree here. You can expect the same solid customer support from Braintree as always, delivered by the same support, accounts, and risk teams. You can also expect even more innovative technology and products to come during this new chapter for Braintree. If you have specific questions about your account, you can always talk to a real person at 877.434.2894 or support@braintreepayments.com.
- jareau 13y ago
  Hey Nathan, many of our customers at Balanced (those that want it) get a designated account manager whom they can call if any of our standard support channels fail them. If that doesn't work feel free to give my cell a ring: (Tucson, AZ area code)-869-1947
jval 13y ago
Wow, if Braintree is worth $800M.. what must Stripe be worth?
- bti 13y ago
  Around 500M.
saneshark 13y ago
Rather than bickering about how this is bad for the market, why don't you folks write to the DOJ or your congressmen and voice your opposition? The DOJ rightfully stopped the AT&T / T-Mobile merger in its tracks, who is to say that they wouldn't do something similar in this case?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Because there are hundreds of options for credit card processing in the US, as opposed to a handful of cell providers for some regions. There's no risk of creating a monopoly or significantly reducing competition here.
manishsharan 13y ago
What is the rational behind this move? From my perspective, Braintree had a good brand ( compared to paypal), locked-in customer base and sizeable cashflow (my conjecture based on their fees). Incumbents and first movers in this industry have a huge advantage over newcomers - so they were not as much at risk from newer start-ups. They were also risk averse in how they accepted new customers . Could they not have restructured, focused on serving their existing customers rather than chasing growth, maybe downsized a bit, and gone for the long run viability with an IPO in about 5 years?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Braintree's 2011 revenue (from their Inc 5000 listing) was $9.9M. A $800M buyout is the equivalent of 80 years of future revenue. That's a lot of cash to turn down.
  - gokhan 13y ago
    2011 is almost two years ago.
- programminggeek 13y ago
  They took on a lot of VC and there is no way that an IPO would have valued Braintree at the level that PayPal did. With the amount of investment they took on, they needed an acquisition of at least 500-750 million to get the 10x return their investors expected. In short, when you take on enough investment, your options are IPO or acquisition, whatever makes your big investors the happiest.
  - ExpiredLink 13y ago
    > They took on a lot of VC and there is no way that an IPO would have valued Braintree at the level that PayPal did. So actually the VCs aimed the company to be bought by PayPal ... and succeeded. Seems that most people misunderstood Braintree's business model.
jacquesm 13y ago
The big winner here is not Braintree (though all the founders and current investors are to be congratulated) but Stripe. PC & Co, keep at it :)
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  I agree, I hope Stripe continues to prosper and grow as a great company.
- yogo 13y ago
  Right now Braintree is a big winner. They built a great alternative and successfully exited. Longer term it does make things very favorable for Stripe.
  - yesplorer 13y ago
    they built an alternative and ended up at where they are supposed to be alternative to.. that doesn't sound like a big winner to me
    - tg3 13y ago
      unless they change PayPal for the better. If PayPal ends up more Braintree than before, I'd say Braintree got a nice exit and accomplished their goals.
    - yogo 13y ago
      I was referring to winning in terms of being a business. Yes we all hate seeing them swallowed by PayPal but at the end of the day it was a business, not some organization trying to do social good.
- pc 13y ago
  Thanks! We will :). (Today belongs to Braintree, as you say -- congrats to all of the folks connected with the company.)
  - jacquesm 13y ago
sergiotapia 13y ago
Boo! Paypal sucks and is a terrible company. I only use it when I'm forced to because I do not have access to international credit cards here in South America (where I live). Too bad.
- mamcx 13y ago
  I feel the pain! I'm building a iPad POS and finally forget about provide credit card payments for my latin-america customers (except using paypal).
itchitawa 13y ago
It's a pity all these "better-than-Paypal" companies only serve US/Canada/sometimes Europe. Paypal owns the whole rest of the world! Maybe they can now help internationalize Braintree instead of imposing their badness onto it. Also sad that you can't sell hair extensions with Braintree :?(
- jareau 13y ago
  Click the "Select your country" button at the bottom of Braintree's site. It looks like they're available in US, CAN, AUS, and 40+ countries in Europe, but yes, PayPal owns the rest of the world, could help Braintree expand faster.
rafski 13y ago
"Speaking to RTÉ News in Dublin, Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison said he and brother John have no plans to sell the company. He said they already have experience of selling a company early in their careers and saw what that involves." http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0903/471900-stripe-launch/ http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0903/471900-stripe-laun... The video interviews with Patrick are worth a look too. Patrick is 24, his brother is even younger. I am with Stripe from the day they launched in Ireland, it was easy to choose them over the likes of Braintree and Paymill who aimed for simplicity but still required quite some formalities. Also, Paymill is Samwer brothers, a turn-off for some entrepreneurs and developers.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  "Speaking to RTE News in Dublin, Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison said he and brother John plan to sell as soon as possible at the largest possible price". If you can't imagine the opposite quote ever happening then there's no point putting much weight on the initial one - no matter what the circumstance.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Except that that wasn't the quote.
    - jusben1369 13y ago
      Perhaps it would have been less snippety to say "What else can they say when asked?"
ahallock 13y ago
I hope Paypal handles this better than PayflowPro, which is a seriously neglected product acquired from Verisign . No support on the weekends, even if your account is having technical issues that disrupt customer payments.
prezjordan 13y ago
Just cashed out all my money on Venmo.
misiti3780 13y ago
Im happy for them, but you have to admit a lot has changed since this one was published: https://37signals.com/svn/posts/2800-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-braintree https://37signals.com/svn/posts/2800-bootstrapped-profitable...
richardlblair 13y ago
A lot of haters. They had a successful exit, and for a good chunk of cash. This is a big win for the Braintree team. It's always good when people can cash out their shares.
Judson 13y ago
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Venmo, which was acquired by Braintree. Its no secret that PayPal wants to dominate mobile payments - yet, most people don't even know that you can send money to other people for free using PayPal (an essential component to mobile person to person payments).
- gummify 13y ago
  I agree. The new PayPal wallet app that just launched recently is fitting for an older generation and could be improved 100x with Venmo. It will be interesting to see how they will fold Venmo into the current PayPal app, or would it make more sense to keep them as separate apps? I think the latter makes more sense.
- ennuihenry 13y ago
  This article's title is interesting given the acquisition: http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/16/braintree-buys-venmo-for-26m-if-paypal-wasnt-scared-before-it-should-be-now/ http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/16/braintree-buys-venmo-for-26...
methodin 13y ago
Let's hope Paypal adopts more of Braintree's practices than vice-versa.
jpswade 13y ago
If you remember Google Checkout has been scrapped and merchants won’t be able to accept payments after the 20th of November 2013. One of the three companies Google recommended as a replacement payment gateway was in fact Braintree. http://tamebay.com/2013/09/paypal-to-acquire-braintree-google-checkout-clients.html http://tamebay.com/2013/09/paypal-to-acquire-braintree-googl...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
TomGullen 13y ago
Congrats to Braintree! My only concern is this is reducing competition in a market that desperately needs more competition.
CptCodeMonkey 13y ago
That's too bad.
bonemachine 13y ago
I'd be curious as to what this would likely mean for an employee of Braintree (or Venmo) holding, say, a 0.25 to 1.5 precent equity slice (or option). Note that I'm not asking anyone from either of those companies to leak, here. Just that I'd be curious what the payout (if any) would likely be in this scenario, drawing on past models.
- nirmel 13y ago
  Are you incapable of multiplying by a decimal? I wonder how much somehow who owns 1% of $100 has. Any rough ideas?
  - bonemachine 13y ago
    Equity splits are a bit more complicated than that, actually. Especially when company B buys company A, and in turn is bought by company C.
Osiris 13y ago
I'm curious if PayPal will begin to shift to make accepting PayPal requests as simple as credit card. I suppose the problem with that is the need to supply a password, but they could change things in PayPal to use something like Google Authenticator to use a 6-digit pin, or perhaps a separate purchase-only password that cannot log into the account. It would be great to be able to use the same API to accept credit card and PayPal payments. I currently use Braintree for CC payments but I have to have a completely separate workflow for PayPal payments.
- droopyEyelids 13y ago
  Have you heard of Venmo Touch? It allows payments with one click/tap so long as you're "cookied" with a Venmo token.
hayksaakian 13y ago
EBay recognized there are two types of people who pay online, those that like PayPal and those that don't. Now they can serve both.
vladmk 13y ago
Damn I just read about Braintree in Choose Yourself...now its being acquired for 800 Million...
bdcravens 13y ago
I'm amused that photo-sharing companies are more valuable than CC payment processing companies that actually generate revenue.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jareau 13y ago
  COGS for your standard photosharing app are much lower than for a payment processor and they don't have to deal with crazy amounts of risk (CC chargebacks). But yes, I get your point.
billclerico 13y ago
congrats to the team. building payments is hard (braintree has been at it since 2007) and it's great to see a successful exit for a solid team & company
sweeps 13y ago
We were in the middle of migrating from PayPal to Braintree for a marketplace solution. Anyone have documentation or comments on Stripe vs. Balancedpayments.com vs. Braintree for marketplaces?
- cristinacordova 13y ago
  (I work at Stripe) We have two products built for marketplaces, including Stripe Connect (https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect) and Stripe Payouts (https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with-stripe https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with-stripe), which differ depending on what type of marketplace you're building. Docs for Connect are here (https://stripe.com/docs/connect https://stripe.com/docs/connect) and docs for Payouts are here (https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers). Feel free to email me at cristina@stripe.com if you're not sure which would be the best fit for you.
- jareau 13y ago
  Hi, I'm one of Balanced's co-founders. You might find this Quora post helpful [1]. Each company you mentioned chimes in about their relative strengths. From the Balanced side, here's why I think we stand out: Balanced has been doing nothing but marketplace payments since early 2011, and have a history of coming out with the functionality most useful to marketplaces (and crowdfunders) 6-12 months before anyone else: - Next-day payouts (same-day for WF) - Stand-alone ACH payouts - White-label merchant onboarding - Dynamic soft-descriptor control We've got a lot more coming out soon, and as an open company, you'll have a voice in exactly what we build. That said, I'm not sure what your specific needs are, but shoot me an email at jkwade@balancedpayments.com and we can figure it out. Thanks! [1] http://www.quora.com/With-the-release-of-Braintree-Marketplaces-is-there-any-actual-difference-between-Braintree-Stripe-WePay-and-Balanced http://www.quora.com/With-the-release-of-Braintree-Marketpla...
nakedrobot2 13y ago
I guess that's what Paypal used my "rolling reserve" for.
pyfish 13y ago
Wasn't Braintree owned by Wells Fargo, the worst bank ever? Yet Braintree itself was still awesome during that time. Let's hope that awesomeness continues under Paypal.
- jareau 13y ago
  No on the footer of Braintree's site it states: > Braintree is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A This means Braintree is using WF as a banking service provider, but is not owned by them.
  - pyfish 13y ago
    Cool thanks for clarifying
- AhtiK 13y ago
  No, Braintree is using Wells Fargo in US as a Merchant Service Provider. This has nothing to do with the ownership.
digerata 13y ago
Who gives a shit as long as Stripe is still around.
dschiptsov 13y ago
Now it runs so smoothly..) Btw, I think YC already peaked, isn't it?)

326 points by paraschopra 13y ago

Vvector 13y ago

"Braintree" not "Briantree"

BetaCygni 13y ago
Maybe it's because the CEO of braintree is called "Bill Ready". Heh.

jwblackwell 13y ago

Well this has put me off ever using them.

sanswork 13y ago
Thats ok. I'm pretty sure they won't exist for much longer now anyhow.

confluence 13y ago

Anyone got stats on the acquisition split between owning parties (founders/investors/employees)?

patio11 13y ago
People always ask for this, and the answer is always going to be "We won't disclose that." Publishing the cap table is invariably going to be net negative for the people on it. To the limited extent that having rough numbers helps improve your estimation of what the payoff matrix is if you build a business to where it is worth $800 million: typically, the founders would split several hundred million, most employees would get $X0,000 to $Y00,000, and exceptionally early employees plus key executives (CEO, etc) walk away with a few million. The remainder (several hundred million) goes to the investors. Braintree's numbers might be different due to their bootstrapped pre-funding trajectory or due to choices made by the founders, but ultimately their numbers are their numbers.

madaxe 13y ago

Imagine how upset they'll be when they thought they were buying Braintree, but got some guy called Brian's tree.

jwblackwell 13y ago
It appears Mr Brian Tree is actually an actor - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871672/ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871672/
Peroni 13y ago
I initially thought they bought a town - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braintree,_Essex http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braintree,_Essex

chuckd1356 13y ago

Congrats to Stripe for all the new users!

pcunite 13y ago
Wow, I was looking at Braintree when I found Stripe last year. I wanted something truly different from PayPal for my customers. Looks like I made the right call.
jusben1369 13y ago
Hah. The real lesson if course is no place is really a safe port.
Silhouette 13y ago
I suspect this is very good timing on the part of Braintree. With Stripe now actively rolling out across more than North America and with other low-overhead payment services starting to appear as well, Braintree were effectively trapped in no-man's-land with their existing business model. For start-ups and small businesses, they were way too heavy for even basic stuff like signing up compared to the new competition. For larger, established businesses, direct merchant accounts and other banking facilities are probably worth the hassle given the better margins available. If I were them and had an out like this, I'd take it in a heartbeat, too.
jgalt212 13y ago
I heard that. As I've said before, people revere the PayPal mafia, but revile PayPal. As it's been said by others here, this is certainly good for Stripe because more than a few Braintree customers will flock their way to avoid PayPal, but it also creates opportunities for other upstarts in this arena. That being said, there is a certain amount of lock-in for these products, so while it's relatively easy for a business to transition their new users/payers from Braintree to Stripe/others, it's pretty painful to transition existing users/payers out of Braintree as all existing users would need to re-key their CC numbers and billing addresses.
- szaronsj 13y ago

chromaton 13y ago

This has put me off of Braintree and on to Stripe, but not for the reasons you might suspect. You see, I still want to take PayPal payments from my customers who prefer it. But it doesn't seem like a good business to have all my eggs in one basket, and using a competing payment system gives me the ability to switch PayPal off if they try any shenanigans.

dangrossman 13y ago
That's why I only code against Spreedly [1] instead of directly against any payment processor. One API instead of 53, switch processors just by changing a variable, and you can securely store customers' payment info without locking yourself into any processor's vaulting solution either. 1: https://spreedly.com/ https://spreedly.com/
- mithras 13y ago
  But instead you are reliant on Spreedly. Looks interesting though.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    Which is a much better thing to be reliant on. Payment processors are in the risk business -- becoming a risky account to underwrite, or their making a mistake in evaluating the risk, means you lose your account, any money that hasn't yet made it to your bank, and any customer info you have stored. Because the processor bears all the risk for chargebacks and bankruptcies of its merchants, it's an extremely thin margin business. Spreedly is in the secure API business. They don't care much about the health of your business, the risk associated with your transactions, or anything else the processors care about. They just have to pass around messages and get paid a fee every time they do. It's a fat margin business. The risk of losing a Spreedly account is much lower than losing a payment account. The risk of Spreedly suddenly going out of business is much lower than the risk of a small merchant account provider/reseller going out of business. And if you choose to stop relying on Spreedly, they'll hand you all your customer data (securely) to take elsewhere, which most gateways with card vaulting refuse to do. It's not a choice of who to commit to, it's freedom from vendor lock-in.

shrikant 13y ago

Looks like Braintree will have to change all their "we're not PayPal!" marketing now.

fredley 13y ago
As a Braintree customer I am a little worried. I went with them for a number of reasons, but one of the big ones was the fact that they're not PayPal.
- vladsanchez 13y ago
  http://www.dwolla.com http://www.dwolla.com
- jfoster 13y ago
  PayPal likely purchased them because they aspire to be more like Braintree.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    Few things could qualify so wholeheartedly as a crock of shit, but your statement is one of them.
    - jfoster 13y ago
      I should've supported my assertion with this: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-customer-service/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-custom... If you still think I'm wrong, please be constructive about it.
  - doubt_me 13y ago
    Is there any evidence of this? Besides 800m in cash
    - jfoster 13y ago
      David Marcus has previously acknowledged that PayPal needs to improve: http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-customer-service/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-custom...

hpvic03 13y ago

In the long run I suspect that this will be a huge win for Stripe.

pain_perdu 13y ago
agreed.
- Ecio78 13y ago
  If Paypal doesn't buy them too.. according to this article[1] the valuation is 500m, so less than what PP paid for Braintree.. [1] http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/brothers-vow-not-to-sell-stripe-web-firm-valued-at-500m-29544203.html http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/brothers-vow-not-to-sel...
  - Fuxy 13y ago
    As usual old and awful services survive by buying out the better competition. Survival of the richest not the one with better service.
  - rafski 13y ago
    Doesn't this article say specifically Stripe is not for sale? I don't know if there are other investors than Y Combinator though, there might be one that will push for a sale.
    - random42 13y ago
      At the right price, everything is for sale. Not let anyone tell you otherwise...
    - pc 13y ago
      > I don't know if there are other investors than Y Combinator though, there might be one that will push for a sale. We do have other investors, but (luckily) they're as uninterested in selling as we are. We've always been clear with them that we want to build this for the long-term.

fideloper 13y ago

Did they want Venmo for it's ability to make payments online, or to kill competition that lets people give/receive payments "for free".

joshuak 13y ago

We were just about to add payments to our site, and Braintree was high on the list to checkout. Any other suggestions in addition to Stripe? -edit- This seems like a good list: http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com

dangrossman 13y ago
If you do at least $3-5k/month in transactions, a real merchant account from a bank/ISO/MSP. I pay $0.05 + 0.04% markup over interchange. Even after the monthly and gateway (Authorize.net) fees, that's around 2%, compared to Stripe's 2.9% or PayPal's 2.2% (I qualify for their merchant rate discount). Amex cards are the only ones I pay more for by not doing a flat rate. [By coding against Spreedly, it's possible to do things like send all Visa and MasterCard charges to Authorize.net, and all Amex charges to PayPal for the flat rate, without ever seeing the cardholder data myself. I don't though.]
- ashray 13y ago
  I'm more interested in micropayments but this interchange stuff seems a bit complicated. How would a $2 payment work out with interchange included ? I mean, what fees would apply for a $2 credit card payment ?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jeffasinger 13y ago
    So you'd have to pay interchange, plus whatever your processor charges on top of that, which will depend on them, and volume. You can definitely shop around a little bit, there's probably several local people who can talk you through it and bring you some offers to the table from various processors, but also get a quote from people like TSYS, First Data, and Chase Paymentech directly. I'm remembering fees varying from $.05 to $0.10 and 0.10% to 0.15% on top of interchange. The visa interchange rates are available at (1) to give you an idea. You're mostly interested in the eCommerce categories probably, so you'll be paying 1.80 to 1.95% plus $0.10 on top of whatever you're paying from you're processor for credit cards, debit cards are cheaper. Many people that do micropayments will try to combine some transactions together, in order to save money. That said, you might be interested in paypal micropayments (2), as they only charge $0.05 + 5%, which for a $2 transaction, is a big savings. 1: http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-reimbursement-fees-april2013.pdf http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-... 2: https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropaym...

Demiurge 13y ago

Sight, will there ever be a PayPal alternative?

joeblau 13y ago
I've suggested Stripe, but I know they have some geolocation restrictions.

harel 13y ago

We are just about to start using BrainTree, for the only reason that they are not PayPal...

Kliment 13y ago
Then switch now before they have your customer data siloed and it's too late.
esw 13y ago
I've been a Braintree customer for several years and have been really happy with the service and support, but if I were in your shoes I'd probably take a hard look at Stripe.

janlukacs 13y ago

We've just signed up with braintree the other day trying to flee PayPal (somehow i thought the deal won't go through). Let's hope for the best :)

sailfast 13y ago

While I like to see more competition in the marketplace, I think this is a smart move for Paypal and also a big milestone for a Chicago startup exit. Congratulations are in order to the Braintree team.

JohnGB 13y ago

Time to look for a new payment provider. Braintree stood out with their amazing service and support. Paypal stand out for their complete lack of competent service and support.

m4tthumphrey 13y ago

Ouch. I feel for Braintree customers. I expect many of them chose them primarily because they were not PayPal.

dcc1 13y ago

Paypal will kill it, PAYPAL are the absolute worst company in the world and terrible to for any new businesses who endup having their money "held" for ridiculous amounts of time, and no customer support.

jfoster 13y ago
Why do you think PayPal bought them? It probably wasn't solely for the userbase, right?
- droopyEyelids 13y ago
  My take: 1) Braintree is a dog fart compared to paypal. They certainly weren't bought for the user base. (although, their size probably probably affected the choice between stripe and bt) 2) David Marcus was acquihired from a team of 5 (a 'real startup') and has been working to startupify paypal. [1] Perhaps he thinks Braintree could be an example to the rest of the company. 3) Venmo is the most successful peer to peer mobile payments app. Peer to peer mobile payments will transition into wallet, and then banking. It's an important position to own. 4) Paypal's customer base is 'aging' like yahoo's has been. Braintree has a younger, hipper market segment (than paypal). 5) Stripe is cooler than braintree, but another order of magnitude smaller, plus they don't have the white-glove support of Braintree. From what I've heard, DM is continuously frustrated by Paypal's support. I believe BT's support is seen as a learning opportunity for PayPal. Also, Braintree was able to successfully copy all Stripe's innovations. Braintree has large, mature intl. presence, too. Not an expert but thats my attempt to be 'objective' [1]http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-how-david-marcus-is-dismantling-paypal-to-save-it/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-h...
  - Flenser 13y ago
    Venmo is also used by Simple[1] [2] so it's already in banking. That may have influenced things. If Simple get big then Paypal could end up processing a significant amount of banking transactions. [1] https://simple.com/ https://simple.com/ [2] http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/20/mobile-payments-are-one-third-of-braintrees-business/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/20/mobile-payments-are-one-thi...

artursapek 13y ago

I wonder how much Paypal has badgered Stripe for an acquisition.

BallinBige 13y ago
Braintree is more developed as a business

cvburgess 13y ago

Although I am sticking with Stripe, I hope that they leverage features like Venmo with PayPal's (rather large) user base - mobile payments are terrible as it stands. It'll be interesting to see if large partners (GitHub, AirBnB, etc) stay onboard through the transition or if they are coerced by competitors.

tmuir 13y ago

I'm always amused when I read the statements from newly acquired companies. They refuse to call it what it is, a purchase, and instead frame it as an alignment, a partnership, anything that allows them to distract from the fact that they are no longer autonomous.

AhtiK 13y ago
One hardly ever hears the term "takeover" these days :)
- Fuxy 13y ago
  That's probably because we all know what takeover means so they try to describe it and dace around what it actually is to make it sound better. It's how you say it not what it is although by my book it's still the same damn thing.
deleted 13y ago
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AhtiK 13y ago

Title is a bit misleading, Braintree is not acquired by Paypal. 1. The transaction is planned between eBay and Braintree. 2. At this point eBay has plans to acquire Braintree (agreed to acquire).

jfoster 13y ago
Yeah, but Braintree's CEO is reporting into David Marcus, and all of the quotes from the eBay side are talking about PayPal. For all intents and purposes, Braintree has been acquired by PayPal.
deleted 13y ago
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geori 13y ago

WOW! Didn't see that one coming.

Ixiaus 13y ago

Boy, everyone is so negative about the purchase on here! Braintree's customer base is far too large at this point for PayPal to just shut it down; that would be terrible PR because Braintree is critical to many businesses at this point. It's also not that easy to just go rip out one processor for another on a huge legacy code base. PayPal would be making things worse for themselves if they did that and this purchase, is IMHO, an attempt to make things better for them and to bring them into the modern software world. I'm sure they also acquired Braintree for their engineers!

AhtiK 13y ago
Braintree processes ~11b/year. Paypal ~$145b/y. This year Paypal expects to process on mobile twice as much as Braintree is processing as a whole. The margins in this business are very small, .9% transaction fees on 11b are not that huge. Where Braintree misses the opportunity is gathering better for young startups that are in the early growth phase. 100 EUR monthly minimum on .10c/trx fees is not easy to digest in the beginning.
- gaadd33 13y ago
  Where did you hear that Braintree is going to a 100EUR monthly minimum?
  - AhtiK 13y ago
    https://www.braintreepayments.com/ https://www.braintreepayments.com/ "Interchange +.9% + €.10 per transaction. €100 per month minimum • Everything included • No additional fees". This is probably shown only to EU visitors. I also confirmed this with braintreepayments support and their reply was: "The €100 is a monthly minimum based on a per transaction fee of €0.10. For example, if your first month of transaction charges are €68, you would need to pay an additional €32 to 'top up' the amount. Interchange + 0.90% is not part of the calculation. Only the per transaction fee of €0.10 is used to calculate the €100 monthly minimum." When I switch the site to "United States" it reads: "2.9% + $.30 per transaction. No additional fees • No minimums • Everything included" Extremely annoyed by seeing this minimum applied only to the EU countries!

nhangen 13y ago

It's disappointing, because among that market segment, Braintree is the only one that offers phone support, and for that, I fancy them over Stripe, Balanced, and others. That said, maybe now with Paypal support, they will reverse their stance on crowdfunding. If not, I'm desperate for a professional payment processor that doesn't ask me to send an email if I have an issue.

yogo 13y ago
Actually that's one of the things that annoyed me. For quite a while when you try to login at braintreegateway and you clicked Forgot Password it asked you to call them. There are somethings phone calls are good for and I don't think resetting a password is one of them. Maybe they had a good reason for that. And why the hell doesn't "braintreegateway.com" redirect to the right place?
deleted 13y ago
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mvboeke 13y ago
Michael from Braintree here. You can expect the same solid customer support from Braintree as always, delivered by the same support, accounts, and risk teams. You can also expect even more innovative technology and products to come during this new chapter for Braintree. If you have specific questions about your account, you can always talk to a real person at 877.434.2894 or support@braintreepayments.com.
jareau 13y ago
Hey Nathan, many of our customers at Balanced (those that want it) get a designated account manager whom they can call if any of our standard support channels fail them. If that doesn't work feel free to give my cell a ring: (Tucson, AZ area code)-869-1947

jval 13y ago

Wow, if Braintree is worth $800M.. what must Stripe be worth?

bti 13y ago
Around 500M.

saneshark 13y ago

Rather than bickering about how this is bad for the market, why don't you folks write to the DOJ or your congressmen and voice your opposition? The DOJ rightfully stopped the AT&T / T-Mobile merger in its tracks, who is to say that they wouldn't do something similar in this case?

dangrossman 13y ago
Because there are hundreds of options for credit card processing in the US, as opposed to a handful of cell providers for some regions. There's no risk of creating a monopoly or significantly reducing competition here.

manishsharan 13y ago

What is the rational behind this move? From my perspective, Braintree had a good brand ( compared to paypal), locked-in customer base and sizeable cashflow (my conjecture based on their fees). Incumbents and first movers in this industry have a huge advantage over newcomers - so they were not as much at risk from newer start-ups. They were also risk averse in how they accepted new customers . Could they not have restructured, focused on serving their existing customers rather than chasing growth, maybe downsized a bit, and gone for the long run viability with an IPO in about 5 years?

dangrossman 13y ago
Braintree's 2011 revenue (from their Inc 5000 listing) was $9.9M. A $800M buyout is the equivalent of 80 years of future revenue. That's a lot of cash to turn down.
- gokhan 13y ago
  2011 is almost two years ago.
programminggeek 13y ago
They took on a lot of VC and there is no way that an IPO would have valued Braintree at the level that PayPal did. With the amount of investment they took on, they needed an acquisition of at least 500-750 million to get the 10x return their investors expected. In short, when you take on enough investment, your options are IPO or acquisition, whatever makes your big investors the happiest.
- ExpiredLink 13y ago
  > They took on a lot of VC and there is no way that an IPO would have valued Braintree at the level that PayPal did. So actually the VCs aimed the company to be bought by PayPal ... and succeeded. Seems that most people misunderstood Braintree's business model.

jacquesm 13y ago

The big winner here is not Braintree (though all the founders and current investors are to be congratulated) but Stripe. PC & Co, keep at it :)

sergiotapia 13y ago
I agree, I hope Stripe continues to prosper and grow as a great company.
yogo 13y ago
Right now Braintree is a big winner. They built a great alternative and successfully exited. Longer term it does make things very favorable for Stripe.
- yesplorer 13y ago
  they built an alternative and ended up at where they are supposed to be alternative to.. that doesn't sound like a big winner to me
  - tg3 13y ago
    unless they change PayPal for the better. If PayPal ends up more Braintree than before, I'd say Braintree got a nice exit and accomplished their goals.
  - yogo 13y ago
    I was referring to winning in terms of being a business. Yes we all hate seeing them swallowed by PayPal but at the end of the day it was a business, not some organization trying to do social good.
pc 13y ago
Thanks! We will :). (Today belongs to Braintree, as you say -- congrats to all of the folks connected with the company.)
- jacquesm 13y ago

sergiotapia 13y ago

Boo! Paypal sucks and is a terrible company. I only use it when I'm forced to because I do not have access to international credit cards here in South America (where I live). Too bad.

mamcx 13y ago
I feel the pain! I'm building a iPad POS and finally forget about provide credit card payments for my latin-america customers (except using paypal).

itchitawa 13y ago

It's a pity all these "better-than-Paypal" companies only serve US/Canada/sometimes Europe. Paypal owns the whole rest of the world! Maybe they can now help internationalize Braintree instead of imposing their badness onto it. Also sad that you can't sell hair extensions with Braintree :?(

jareau 13y ago
Click the "Select your country" button at the bottom of Braintree's site. It looks like they're available in US, CAN, AUS, and 40+ countries in Europe, but yes, PayPal owns the rest of the world, could help Braintree expand faster.

rafski 13y ago

"Speaking to RTÉ News in Dublin, Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison said he and brother John have no plans to sell the company. He said they already have experience of selling a company early in their careers and saw what that involves." http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0903/471900-stripe-launch/ http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0903/471900-stripe-laun... The video interviews with Patrick are worth a look too. Patrick is 24, his brother is even younger. I am with Stripe from the day they launched in Ireland, it was easy to choose them over the likes of Braintree and Paymill who aimed for simplicity but still required quite some formalities. Also, Paymill is Samwer brothers, a turn-off for some entrepreneurs and developers.

jusben1369 13y ago
"Speaking to RTE News in Dublin, Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison said he and brother John plan to sell as soon as possible at the largest possible price". If you can't imagine the opposite quote ever happening then there's no point putting much weight on the initial one - no matter what the circumstance.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Except that that wasn't the quote.
  - jusben1369 13y ago
    Perhaps it would have been less snippety to say "What else can they say when asked?"

ahallock 13y ago

I hope Paypal handles this better than PayflowPro, which is a seriously neglected product acquired from Verisign . No support on the weekends, even if your account is having technical issues that disrupt customer payments.

prezjordan 13y ago

Just cashed out all my money on Venmo.

misiti3780 13y ago

Im happy for them, but you have to admit a lot has changed since this one was published: https://37signals.com/svn/posts/2800-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-braintree https://37signals.com/svn/posts/2800-bootstrapped-profitable...

richardlblair 13y ago

A lot of haters. They had a successful exit, and for a good chunk of cash. This is a big win for the Braintree team. It's always good when people can cash out their shares.

Judson 13y ago

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Venmo, which was acquired by Braintree. Its no secret that PayPal wants to dominate mobile payments - yet, most people don't even know that you can send money to other people for free using PayPal (an essential component to mobile person to person payments).

gummify 13y ago
I agree. The new PayPal wallet app that just launched recently is fitting for an older generation and could be improved 100x with Venmo. It will be interesting to see how they will fold Venmo into the current PayPal app, or would it make more sense to keep them as separate apps? I think the latter makes more sense.
ennuihenry 13y ago
This article's title is interesting given the acquisition: http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/16/braintree-buys-venmo-for-26m-if-paypal-wasnt-scared-before-it-should-be-now/ http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/16/braintree-buys-venmo-for-26...

methodin 13y ago

Let's hope Paypal adopts more of Braintree's practices than vice-versa.

jpswade 13y ago

If you remember Google Checkout has been scrapped and merchants won’t be able to accept payments after the 20th of November 2013. One of the three companies Google recommended as a replacement payment gateway was in fact Braintree. http://tamebay.com/2013/09/paypal-to-acquire-braintree-google-checkout-clients.html http://tamebay.com/2013/09/paypal-to-acquire-braintree-googl...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

TomGullen 13y ago

Congrats to Braintree! My only concern is this is reducing competition in a market that desperately needs more competition.

CptCodeMonkey 13y ago

That's too bad.

bonemachine 13y ago

I'd be curious as to what this would likely mean for an employee of Braintree (or Venmo) holding, say, a 0.25 to 1.5 precent equity slice (or option). Note that I'm not asking anyone from either of those companies to leak, here. Just that I'd be curious what the payout (if any) would likely be in this scenario, drawing on past models.

nirmel 13y ago
Are you incapable of multiplying by a decimal? I wonder how much somehow who owns 1% of $100 has. Any rough ideas?
- bonemachine 13y ago
  Equity splits are a bit more complicated than that, actually. Especially when company B buys company A, and in turn is bought by company C.

Osiris 13y ago

I'm curious if PayPal will begin to shift to make accepting PayPal requests as simple as credit card. I suppose the problem with that is the need to supply a password, but they could change things in PayPal to use something like Google Authenticator to use a 6-digit pin, or perhaps a separate purchase-only password that cannot log into the account. It would be great to be able to use the same API to accept credit card and PayPal payments. I currently use Braintree for CC payments but I have to have a completely separate workflow for PayPal payments.

droopyEyelids 13y ago
Have you heard of Venmo Touch? It allows payments with one click/tap so long as you're "cookied" with a Venmo token.

hayksaakian 13y ago

EBay recognized there are two types of people who pay online, those that like PayPal and those that don't. Now they can serve both.

vladmk 13y ago

Damn I just read about Braintree in Choose Yourself...now its being acquired for 800 Million...

bdcravens 13y ago

I'm amused that photo-sharing companies are more valuable than CC payment processing companies that actually generate revenue.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jareau 13y ago
COGS for your standard photosharing app are much lower than for a payment processor and they don't have to deal with crazy amounts of risk (CC chargebacks). But yes, I get your point.

billclerico 13y ago

congrats to the team. building payments is hard (braintree has been at it since 2007) and it's great to see a successful exit for a solid team & company

sweeps 13y ago

We were in the middle of migrating from PayPal to Braintree for a marketplace solution. Anyone have documentation or comments on Stripe vs. Balancedpayments.com vs. Braintree for marketplaces?

cristinacordova 13y ago
(I work at Stripe) We have two products built for marketplaces, including Stripe Connect (https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect) and Stripe Payouts (https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with-stripe https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with-stripe), which differ depending on what type of marketplace you're building. Docs for Connect are here (https://stripe.com/docs/connect https://stripe.com/docs/connect) and docs for Payouts are here (https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending-transfers). Feel free to email me at cristina@stripe.com if you're not sure which would be the best fit for you.
jareau 13y ago
Hi, I'm one of Balanced's co-founders. You might find this Quora post helpful [1]. Each company you mentioned chimes in about their relative strengths. From the Balanced side, here's why I think we stand out: Balanced has been doing nothing but marketplace payments since early 2011, and have a history of coming out with the functionality most useful to marketplaces (and crowdfunders) 6-12 months before anyone else: - Next-day payouts (same-day for WF) - Stand-alone ACH payouts - White-label merchant onboarding - Dynamic soft-descriptor control We've got a lot more coming out soon, and as an open company, you'll have a voice in exactly what we build. That said, I'm not sure what your specific needs are, but shoot me an email at jkwade@balancedpayments.com and we can figure it out. Thanks! [1] http://www.quora.com/With-the-release-of-Braintree-Marketplaces-is-there-any-actual-difference-between-Braintree-Stripe-WePay-and-Balanced http://www.quora.com/With-the-release-of-Braintree-Marketpla...

nakedrobot2 13y ago

I guess that's what Paypal used my "rolling reserve" for.

pyfish 13y ago

Wasn't Braintree owned by Wells Fargo, the worst bank ever? Yet Braintree itself was still awesome during that time. Let's hope that awesomeness continues under Paypal.

jareau 13y ago
No on the footer of Braintree's site it states: > Braintree is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A This means Braintree is using WF as a banking service provider, but is not owned by them.
- pyfish 13y ago
  Cool thanks for clarifying
AhtiK 13y ago
No, Braintree is using Wells Fargo in US as a Merchant Service Provider. This has nothing to do with the ownership.

digerata 13y ago

Who gives a shit as long as Stripe is still around.

dschiptsov 13y ago

Now it runs so smoothly..) Btw, I think YC already peaked, isn't it?)