Braintree's first step after being acquired by PayPal will be to support the famous payment method as of 2014.
Braintree was purchased through eBay’s subsidiary PayPal in September and on the 20th of December completed the Acquisition for the amount of $800 million.
The first move eBay and PayPal will be taking with their new acquisition will be to offer PayPal support to Braintree merchants. The idea of somehow being considered PayPal merchants upset some of Braintree’s clientele, due to stories of frozen accounts and withholding of funds. Those concerns were quickly addressed as after the announcement of the purchase in September, PayPal and Braintree notified their merchants they will continue to work as separate entities. The news of PayPal being integrated into Braintree seems to contradict those announcements.
“We’re so excited to join PayPal as a separate service. It means we’ll have the autonomy to continue to work the way we always have. We’ll continue to provide excellent customer service, thoughtful Risk Management and great APIs.” Braintree CEO William Ready posted in his company’s blog in September after the initial announcement.
“You’ll see concrete evidence of our progress as Braintree plans to begin offering PayPal as a payment option to its merchant customers in 2014. Having access to both Braintree and PayPal tools and support will also be better and simpler for developers.” PayPal president David Marcus added on a company blog post on December 19th.
PayPal has already piloted their integration into Braintree’s mobile payment gateway by providing in-app payments with Uber, the popular ride sharing application. PayPal will also continue to offer support for Braintree’s mobile person-to-person payment app Venmo.
Some would believe Marcus had hinted towards the integration with Braintree in his predictions for 2014, stating, “Some of today’s bright young firms will never achieve the scale to survive without joining forces with someone bigger.”
There is no official word on what PayPal’s integration will mean for Braintree merchants, and if the option will be mandatory or optional.
