

Braintree V.Zero SDK – Faster integration, drop-in UI, and pay with PayPal - drewolson
https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/introducing-braintree-vzero

======
chatmasta
And what happens when Braintree (owned by Paypal) decides to drop you as a
merchant? What if you're running a website supporting Tor, or selling proxies
or VPNs, and they decide your content is "against policy?"

They'll "drop" you, and suddenly your "drop in" SDK is completely worthless
and you're forced to write your billing system from the ground up.

From a risk perspective, using a solution like Chargebee, that integrates with
multiple merchant accounts (including Braintree), is a much better choice. If
for whatever reason your merchant drops you (it does happen!), you don't need
to make any code changes. You only need to swap out the backend merchant
account in your Chargee dashboard.

These "batteries included" payment solutions are nice for getting up and
running quickly, but if you have any semblance of long term planning, it's a
bad idea to build your entire billing infrastructure around the API of a
single merchant account provider.

~~~
dcc1
This anyone considering a "serious" long term business should avoid Paypal,
they eventually screw every merchant one way or another, their history is
littered with horror stories and business that have grown reliant on then and
went under when their funds get eventually frozen over some automated
stupidity and no customer support.

------
ericcholis
Some usability things I noticed on the Drop-in UI Sample Page:
([https://www.braintreepayments.com/features/drop-
in](https://www.braintreepayments.com/features/drop-in))

It appears that the PayPal is a header, rather than a button, it has no call
to action. Separating the credit card form from the button and giving it a
clear header (Like: "Pay With Credit Card") would help indicate the choice of
PayPal or Credit Card.

Also, I'm not sure if it's intentional, but the credit card form doesn't
actually do anything. Completing the form with a test credit card gives no
follow-up call to action. This could be confusing to people wanting to see a
"working" integration.

~~~
benmills
I'm one of the developers who works on v.zero. We're planning on constantly
improving the drop-in UI based on feedback and data. Currently we allow you to
embed the form shown in your own form. It's expected you would include your
own call to action that would be more contextual for the user.

On native mobile we,ve taken the approach to render the call to action for you
and allow you to configure the text. Is that something you would find useful
on web as well? It's definitely something we've debated internally.

~~~
ericcholis
I like that I've got the ability to control the display, I'm looking forward
to testing the integration. But, for some people, providing the full look and
feel might fit better with the "drop-in" notion.

------
omfg
I don't quite understand the recent developments at Braintree. We were using
both them and PayPal for awhile before deciding to turn out card transactions
over to PayPal also as it would secure a better rate. Meanwhile BrainTree has
been working to make it easier to split processing between the two. Is the end
goal here to make sure you're paying the highest rate? Why wouldn't you only
use PayPal?

------
weixiyen
Will this be able to save credit cards on the device so the user doesn't need
to re-enter their credit card every single time they need to make a purchase?

~~~
klynch
Kristi from Braintree here. You can securely store the card info to the
Braintree vault so the user only has to enter the credit card info in your app
one time. You won't be able to save credit cards to the device to use across
apps.

~~~
jjk
Will we be able to do the same for Paypal credentials? So if someone wants to
do paypal, store that and charge later?

~~~
klynch
Yep, you're able to save PayPal credentials to the vault. From there, you can
treat it exactly like you would a stored credit card.

~~~
midnightmonster
Kristi, what are you actually saving to the vault when I use PayPal? I know
you present the merchant with a token, but how is it accomplished? Has PayPal
had a charge-whenever token capability before that was not widely understood,
or are you actually saving the customer's paypal email and password so you can
charge arbitrary transactions in the future?

~~~
klynch
Paypal does have a future payments token capability [1]. The user must
explicitly authorize the merchant the ability to use the token in order to use
it for future transactions. We save the email for reference, but we never save
the password.

[1] [https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/mobile/make-
fu...](https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/mobile/make-future-
payment/)

~~~
weixiyen
Can Paypal (not Braintree) also authorize future Credit Card purchases from
the same user without having to enter the CC number again? As in, could PayPal
pass me a customer ID when someone purchases with CC via PayPal?

------
talos
Huh. I'm confused, what's to stop someone from copying the "Paypal" button and
associated modal, but simply directing the form to themselves to absorb the
Paypal credentials?

I suppose anyone could do this to take advantage of silly users, but this is
encouraging users to trust 3rd party websites by design.

Seems wide open for phishing.

~~~
aioprisan
I remember seeing these same concerns with the Stripe button. Edit: found the
old discussion link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5079702&mobify=0](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5079702&mobify=0)

~~~
pc
This phishing concern is part of why we decided to use one-time SMS tokens
with Checkout -- there's no password to steal.

~~~
talos
That's good to know -- thanks for clarifying that this is a real security
concern.

------
cte
Does this work for marketplace payments?

~~~
klynch
The new integration method is available for our marketplace merchants, but
PayPal as a payment method is not available for marketplaces in this initial
launch.

------
lbotos
I skimmed but does anyone know why they called it V.zero?

~~~
drfatbooty
Hey I'm Tony, one of the devs at Braintree. We chose v.zero because we tried
to rethink how our merchant integrated with us from first principles. This
represents our simplest integration yet. You can check out more at
[https://www.braintreepayments.com/v.zero](https://www.braintreepayments.com/v.zero)

