
Ask HN: Is Braintree as evil as PayPal? - kintamanimatt
I&#x27;m thinking about using Braintree for a new project in a jurisdiction where Stripe isn&#x27;t available. However, I&#x27;m turned off because they&#x27;re a PayPal company and have been for a while. Does Braintree treat their customers well, or are they just PayPal 2.0?
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saurik
I have never had a problem with PayPal, and the only stories I see of people
having problems with PayPal are _always_ doing something obviously bad, such
as presales or calling a payment a "donation" or purposely lying about their
location to get an account. PayPal offers cheaper pricing than Stripe for
smaller sales and faster ramps for bulk discounts on large numbers of sales.
It also has had a "complete" offering with APIs capable of managing
chargebacks and separated authorization and capture since before Stripe
existed (features Stripe didn't even seem to understand are important), and
has done so with extreme API and UI consistency (which is absolutely key for
any infrastructure component, and has been a complaint I've seen against
Stripe, who seems to like using their customers as guinea pigs). What has been
the experience you had with PayPal that has turned you off from them so badly?

~~~
davismwfl
Seriously? [http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/open-
lawsuit-...](http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/open-lawsuit-
settlements/306260-paypal-account-hold-class-action-settlement/)

I don't know how much business you have actually done with Paypal or what you
have done, but Paypal has screwed numerous good small businesses and charities
with their horrid policies disguised as fraud protection. In the past 7 years
I have worked with a lot of companies and done a significant amount of
e-commerce work which involves payment resolution, and we almost always ran
into issues with Paypal holding funds on good clients.

We had a number of clients where their marketing took months to get traction
and then had an above average to explosive month only to see Paypal freeze the
funds as they flagged them as "fraud". We could prove legitimate orders and
had the product to ship, Paypal didn't care. One company almost went out of
business because of it, luckily they were able to line up some insane interest
rate loans to help cover themselves while Paypal fucked them over. Paypal
doesn't care, they will sit on that money regardless of what you can prove --
did you see/read the class action lawsuit? BTW -- I personally don't have an
issue with Paypal doing an initial hold when the account suddenly goes from
charging say $5k/month to having a $15k or $45k month, or some variation of
that, but once you can show them it is for valid orders then they should hand
over the funds.

To the OP, I have no clue how Braintree is after the Paypal acquisition but I
would never trust them to run my business from, solely because they are now
subject to Paypal's corporate governance. One last point, I do not feel this
was a Paypal employee issue, it is an executive level/corporate governance
issue with how they decided to implement their fraud protection. It need not
be this way as many banks and other providers have proven for years.

~~~
saurik
1) I don't understand what you are hoping to show with that link: the court
opinions seem to all side with PayPal. When companies settle out of court you
can't really use that to show the side paying the money is wrong: I've settled
out of court myself in situations where I was told I could win the case, but
where the settlement would have been cheaper than continuing the battle.

2) I have done tens of millions of dollars of transactions over PayPal. I also
once had my account put on hold back near when I was first going into
business.

2) You are not allowed to capture funds from someone using a credit card until
you are imminently shipping the product to the customer. You say "had the
product to ship", but then I'm going to have to ask: how did the company
"almost go out of business"? If they already have the product ready to ship,
then all we are talking about here is a delay in compensation. If the company
needed a loan, PayPal is not a company whom you are allowed to get a loan
from, and money collected from sales _is_ a loan until you _deliver_ the
product. Your worst-case scenario here is that you should be able to get the
loan you need on extremely great terms given if you can really show to someone
that you have a ton of money that will be coming to you in 180 days (and the
fact that these people could not obtain a reasonable loan really then
undermines the entire premise that they had good documentation for PayPal's
underwriting...).

~~~
davismwfl
1) I agree, settling a basic lawsuit doesn't mean you are the "loser"
necessarily, sometimes it simply is the smarter choice over spending money on
attorneys and wasting a lot of valuable time. However, two big differences in
this case. 1. A judge reviewed and granted a class action status to this suit
which meant s/he felt there was enough evidence that a jury could conclude
that Paypal was wrong and that there were significantly enough people
"injured" to warrant a class action status. 2. When a company settles to
reduce risk, they almost never admit anything or pay damages to the class.
They may pay court costs and agree to make non-material changes, but
essentially they are just capitalizing the small risk to reduce paying
attorney's fees etc. On the contrary here though, when a company agrees to
change their TOS in a material way and pay damages to the entire class, it is
not a minor thing and it is a signal that they also felt the risk was
reasonably substantial.

2) I am glad you have such great success with Paypal. But it isn't the truth
for others, so being righteous and saying other people must be doing something
wrong or illegal is just really out of touch.

3\. False. The truth is simple, when product sells it has to be replaced so it
is available for the next order. If demand is rising it has to be replaced in
greater quantities to keep up. So yes, product is going out the door, but now
there are reorder points to fulfill to maintain inventory and satisfy new
orders, shipping bills which must be paid, employee wages, sales tax to
governments, employment taxes, rent, insurance etc, all which must be paid
well before the 180 days are up. So if money is being needlessly held for long
periods, a business can easily be put in jeopardy. Most e-commerce companies
don't run on huge margins, so they do not have 12 months reserves saved to
work from, which is essentially what it takes if they get a 6 month hold put
on their funds. Worse, if they are really growing it will take much more then
12 months of reserves, which was true for a number of the business I was
working with. And no, bank loans (or even factoring) to replace/purchase
product are not "easy", "fast" or "low cost" for a small business, even with
proven sales traction and new orders coming in. Instead these loans are
generally treated as moderately high to high risk.

My point about Paypal and their offering loans to the same people whom have
had funds held, stands separately and on its own. It is a horrid business
practice and while not illegal that I can imagine, it sure does seem immoral.
Again, I do not know if they are still doing this today, but you can search
google and find examples within the last year of it taking place.

I really do hope you continue to have success with Paypal and your business. I
also hope Paypal stops their "held funds" behavior as it relates to small
businesses and give people their funds timely. I do not think it is too much
to ask, banks and other clearing houses do it everyday and still provide solid
fraud protection for everyone involved. As for anyone who asks me, I will
continue to steer them to any provider other than Paypal, until I see that
Paypal has made a change in reality not just in media speak.

------
jayajay
Braintree is awesome and their customer support is stellar. I don't work for
Braintree, but I've used their production API in an extensive project where
Stripe basically told me to go fuck myself because of this so-called
jurisdiction.

~~~
olingern
This.

I was integrating Braintree a year ago when some of the documentation was
unclear. They're technical support was amazing on the phone, and cleared
anything the documentation was lacking up.

Also, talking to them wasn't like talking to a tool. Didn't feel like a
megacompany, but just another person on the other side of the line.

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eugenoprea
I've had only good experiences with PayPal and also Braintree. I have an
account with Braintree for about 2 years and I like them.

Plus, they offer a great deal for startups, which get no fees for up to 50K in
specific countries.

------
palidanx
I've been using Braintree as a processor before they got acquired by Paypal
and have been a customer for about 3 years now. Customer service has been
stellar, and I always can get someone on the phone (note that they are on CST
though).

Post paypal acquisition I really haven't noticed any differences.

------
b1twise
PayPal isn't so bad--doing millions through them a year has caused no problems
that couldn't be worked out.

I looked at Braintree before the acquisition and they seemed really cool. I
was able to hang out in their IRC chat room and watch them work.

