Congrats to Braintree! My only concern is this is reducing competition in a market that desperately needs more competition.
PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
121–130 of 187 posts
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
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.
I was linking the article not for showing that they're selling but because it's the first (most recent?) article I found in 2 minutes on Google stating their valuation (one article from 2012 talks about 1bln valuation, btw we're in the same league of Braintree)
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#123That's too bad.
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ally Bank seems to be doing pretty darn well...
Ally Bank also makes your account next to useless until you go through a very tedious verification process from the get go. In my case, they mailed me some documents that unsurprisingly I never ended up bothering with. On the other hand you can sign up and begin using paypal in minutes.
> On the other hand you can sign up and begin using paypal in minutes.
Yes indeedy by deferring the "very tedious verification" process until it massively impacts your business and PP has you by the balls.
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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 ?
If you want customers to be able to pay with a credit card, it will be difficult to get individual charge fees under $0.30. If you expect repeat purchasing, best to aggregate charges either ahead of time (aka "pre-pay") or post.
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#126I'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).
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.
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#127I'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.
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ?
If you want customers to be able to pay with a credit card, it will be difficult to get individual charge fees under $0.30. If you expect repeat purchasing, best to aggregate charges either ahead of time (aka "pre-pay") or post.
How does iTunes do it? They're doing $0.99 payments all the time.
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#129I'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.
Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M
#130Looks like Braintree will have to change all their "we're not PayPal!" marketing now.
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.
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.