PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#131

Post by notatoad » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 4:48 PM UTC

WildUtah wrote: post #128

pbreit wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

probably some combination of

- charging a 30% processing fee

- taking a loss on small payments

- bundling charges whenever possible

- encouraging people to buy itunes gift cards

- being big enough to negotiate better rates than normal people can.

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#132

Post by mvboeke » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 4:49 PM UTC

nhangen wrote: post #60

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.

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.

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#133

Post by badclient » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #124

badclient wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're suggesting that Ally is an alternative to PP, that's nuts. I can see why businesses might be attracted to Ally over PP because of better customer service, but better customer service won't matter if you're not getting the volume of business that may be driven by PayPal.

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#134

Post by xofer » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 4:59 PM UTC

Ixiaus wrote: post #55

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…

  > 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.

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#135

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #117

gilrain wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

But only after the requisite outrage fest on here and other sites. The fact that it takes a front page article on a site read by a lot of industry people to get them to do the right thing is... disheartening, to say the least.

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#136

Post by gummify » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 5:07 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #46

fredley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

A blog from the founder and CEO of Braintree Bill Ready explains that they will continue to work independently whilst adding value to PayPal's weak points; customer service and the younger consumer generation of customers. https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/braintree-teaming-up-...

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#137

Post by hayksaakian » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

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.

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#138

Post by vladmk » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

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

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#139

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

WildUtah wrote: post #128

pbreit wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

#140

Post by knighthacker » Thu, Sep 26, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

xofer wrote: post #134

Ixiaus wrote: post #55

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…

> 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.

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.