PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/paypal-acquires-payments-gateway-braintree-for-800m-in-cash/

by paraschopra • 13 years ago

326 175 13 years ago

techcrunch.com

Vvector• 13 years ago

"Braintree" not "Briantree"

BetaCygni• 13 years ago

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

jwblackwell2• 13 years ago

Well this has put me off ever using them.

sanswork• 13 years ago

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

confluence• 13 years ago

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

patio11• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

jwblackwell2• 13 years ago

It appears Mr Brian Tree is actually an actor - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871672/

Peroni• 13 years ago

I initially thought they bought a town - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braintree,_Essex

chuckd1356• 13 years ago

Congrats to Stripe for all the new users!

pcunite• 13 years 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.

jusben13694• 13 years ago

Hah. The real lesson if course is no place is really a safe port.

Silhouette2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Braintree offers data portability, so you can transition existing customers & credit cards to a new payment system easily. That being said, I see no reason to jump ship unless service deteriorates

tednaleid• 13 years ago

If only PayPal had joined Braintree's "Credit Card Data Portability" initiative [1]. I'm betting that's dead now with them joining PayPal, if it's even still active. If it is, get your data out quick before PayPal can lock it in!

[1] https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/open-letter-to-the-ce...

jareau7• 13 years ago

Why would merchants looking to switch from Braintree expect Stripe's fate to be any different (i.e. acquisition)?

chromaton• 13 years 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.

dangrossman5• 13 years 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/

mithras• 13 years ago

But instead you are reliant on Spreedly. Looks interesting though.

nivertech• 13 years ago

do they support payouts?

dhimes• 13 years ago

Those are exactly the reasons I suspected- and I whole-heartedly agree.

shrikant• 13 years ago

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

fredley• 13 years 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.

jfoster5• 13 years ago

PayPal likely purchased them because they aspire to be more like Braintree.

DonPellegrino• 13 years ago

It doesn't make sense for Ebay to own 2 Paypals. The reason they bought Braintree in the first place is to extend their reach into a different market. Braintree customers chose Braintree because it is NOT Paypal. If I was you I wouldn't be worried too much. Just keep watching the quality of service you get from Braintree and if it starts going down too much, then change.

mvboeke2• 13 years ago

At Braintree we have always earned our merchants' business every day. We were the first payment platform to offer data portability, because we don't believe in locking in our customers, and that doesn't change. As we enter this new chapter, will we continue to earn your business with same great support you've come to expect and even more of the innovative technology you've come to love. Our support and accounts teams are still just a call (or email) away: 877.434.2894 or support@braintreepayments.com.

hpvic03• 13 years ago

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

pain_perdu• 13 years ago

agreed.

Ecio782• 13 years 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-sel...

fideloper• 13 years 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• 13 years 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

dangrossman5• 13 years 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.]

ashray2• 13 years 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 ?

hamburglar• 13 years ago

Don't discount everything Paypal does to buffer you as a merchant from the effects of fraud. I think some people look at raw transaction fees and don't realize how much extra shit they will have to deal with if they're going to process credit cards directly. There is definitely value added by Paypal in this area, and I think it's easily worth more than saving 0.2% on $3-5k in payments per month.

cristinacordova2• 13 years ago

(I work at Stripe)

We've encountered a lot of customers that are paying much more than they should be for a merchant account and gateway setup. Stripe's fees start at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, we don't have any hidden fees, and we offer volume discounts for businesses on track to do $1MM/year or more. Separately, PayPal has many add-on fees ($30 per month if you want to design and host your own checkout pages, 1% cross-border surcharge, 3.5% transaction fee when your customers pay with American Express, etc.) which often make it more expensive than Stripe.

Demiurge• 13 years ago

Sight, will there ever be a PayPal alternative?

joeblau• 13 years ago

I've suggested Stripe, but I know they have some geolocation restrictions.

harel• 13 years ago

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

Kliment• 13 years ago

Then switch now before they have your customer data siloed and it's too late.

esw• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

dcc1• 13 years 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.

jfoster5• 13 years ago

Why do you think PayPal bought them? It probably wasn't solely for the userbase, right?

droopyEyelids2• 13 years 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-h...

conradfr• 13 years ago

Really, the absolute worst company in the world ?

artursapek• 13 years ago

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

BallinBige• 13 years ago

Braintree is more developed as a business

cvburgess• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

AhtiK7• 13 years ago

One hardly ever hears the term "takeover" these days :)

Fuxy2• 13 years 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.

AhtiK7• 13 years 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).

jfoster5• 13 years 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.

geori• 13 years ago

WOW! Didn't see that one coming.

Ixiaus2• 13 years 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!

wslh• 13 years ago

I don't know about the future of Braintree but I know that this acquisition is bad for the e-commerce market. It's an irony that companies challenging the status quo end being part of it.

AhtiK7• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Where did you hear that Braintree is going to a 100EUR monthly minimum?

pjg2• 13 years ago

FYI: Of the total Paypal is processing i.e. ~145B/year only half is Paypal branded i.e. appx $70-80B/year, the rest of it goes through Verisign gateway

gilrain• 13 years ago

Yes, and PayPal definitely has a history of not upsetting its customers, avoiding negative PR, and not making things worse for themselves. We can certainly bet on them to handle this acquisition in a reasonable way.

badclient4• 13 years ago

Show me a company working as a purely Internet bank of sorts and I'll show you a company with pissed off customers. Truth is, this business is very hard. For every time Paypal misidentifies a target and blocks their payments, they correctly identify scammers many more times. We tend to think "is it that hard to tell a scammer from blah legit site?". The answer is yes because guess what scammers are thinking everyday when they wake up? They are thinking 'how can we look more like a legit business so our payments go through'.

I say this as someone whose had to go through paypal's painful process several times in over a decade of use.

Ixiaus2• 13 years ago

No doubt there have been horror stories coming from PayPal and I wouldn't use them as a payment platform. You also have to realize though that people of all demographics use PayPal and their fraud detection/handling reflects that, I think.

People use PayPal for receiving small illicit drug shipment payments to paying their contractors to recurring payments for their service.

You cannot expect to have a great time on a service that is catering to everyone because the lowest common denominator will always ensure the organization has to be on-top of fraud and illicit activity.

I've been waiting for PayPal to do something to show that they are thinking about their long-term health and position in the market and this acquisition is exactly that. It will be interesting to see how competitors (like Stripe and Balanced) end up for this too!

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

avoiding negative PR

They unfroze Mailpile's funds recently. That's a sign of good things.

neovive• 13 years ago

I definitely agree. Contrary to the negative perceptions, there is a major opportunity to market the BrainTree service to eBay's small to mid-size merchants along with other services as part of a professional ecommerce store-in-a-box approach. eBay can bundle every aspect of the sales funnel from customer acquisition through actual credit card purchase. BrainTree could also be used as a replacement for PayPal Payments Pro.

amorphid• 13 years ago

I'm with you Ixiaus. Congrats to everyone everyone at Braintree!

xofer• 13 years ago

  > It's also not that easy to just go rip out one processor 
  > for another on a huge legacy code base.

Unfortunately true. It's always a good idea to support more than 1 processor, ideally all used actively.

I've see many companies get burned by only having one. It takes ages to get another processor up and running.

knighthacker• 13 years ago

Using more than one payment processor is definitely a smart move. Not only to avoid unpredictable consequences such as this acquisition, but also because it will give you a negotiating advantage as payment processing becomes more and more of a commodity.

timdorr• 13 years ago

They've bought payment providers in the past. The last big one was Verisign Payments and they've kept that running as a separate product since 2005! https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/gene...

I also doubt they'll shut down Braintree or roll it into the main product.

pjg2• 13 years ago

The key to note about Verisign purchase is that of the appx. 1/2 of $145B/year volume that paypal processes is through the verisign gateway which is not paypal branded. Verisign payments are about half of total so it was a good acquisition

asabjorn• 13 years ago

I agree that it is still too early to tell if something good will come out of this or not. I am especially curious if Braintree customers will get access to PayPals superior transaction risk assessment technology. That might be huge for people that use Braintree for marketplaces.

nhangen• 13 years 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.

yogo3• 13 years 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?

mvboeke2• 13 years 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.

jareau7• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

bti• 13 years ago

Around 500M.

saneshark• 13 years 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?

dangrossman5• 13 years 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• 13 years 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?

dangrossman5• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

2011 is almost two years ago.

programminggeek• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

jacquesm3• 13 years 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 :)

sergiotapia2• 13 years ago

I agree, I hope Stripe continues to prosper and grow as a great company.

yogo3• 13 years 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• 13 years 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

pc2• 13 years ago

Thanks! We will :).

(Today belongs to Braintree, as you say -- congrats to all of the folks connected with the company.)

jacquesm3• 13 years ago

Braintree, check, Ogone, Check. Who is next?

sergiotapia2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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 :?(

jareau7• 13 years 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.

rafski2• 13 years 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-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.

jusben13694• 13 years 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.

jacquesm3• 13 years ago

Except that that wasn't the quote.

ahallock• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Just cashed out all my money on Venmo.

misiti3780• 13 years 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...

richardlblair• 13 years 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• 13 years 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).

gummify2• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

This article's title is interesting given the acquisition: http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/16/braintree-buys-venmo-for-26...

methodin• 13 years ago

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

jpswade• 13 years 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-googl...

TomGullen• 13 years ago

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

CptCodeMonkey• 13 years ago

That's too bad.

bonemachine2• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Are you incapable of multiplying by a decimal? I wonder how much somehow who owns 1% of $100 has. Any rough ideas?

bonemachine2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

droopyEyelids2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

bdcravens• 13 years ago

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

jareau7• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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?

cristinacordova2• 13 years ago

(I work at Stripe)

We have two products built for marketplaces, including Stripe Connect (https://stripe.com/connect) and Stripe Payouts (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) and docs for Payouts are here (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.

jareau7• 13 years 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-Marketpla...

nakedrobot2• 13 years ago

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

pyfish2• 13 years 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.

AhtiK7• 13 years ago

No, Braintree is using Wells Fargo in US as a Merchant Service Provider. This has nothing to do with the ownership.

jareau7• 13 years 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.

pyfish2• 13 years ago

Cool thanks for clarifying

digerata• 13 years ago

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

dschiptsov• 13 years ago

Now it runs so smoothly..)

Btw, I think YC already peaked, isn't it?)

PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

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