
PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M - paraschopra
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/paypal-acquires-payments-gateway-braintree-for-800m-in-cash/
======
Ixiaus
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, is IMHO, an attempt to make things better for them and to bring them
into the modern software world. I'm sure they also acquired Braintree for
their engineers!

~~~
gilrain
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.

~~~
badclient
Show me a company working as a purely Internet bank of sorts and I'll show you
a company with pissed off customers. Truth is, this business is very hard. For
every time Paypal misidentifies a target and blocks their payments, they
correctly identify scammers many more times. We tend to think "is it that hard
to tell a scammer from _blah legit site_?". The answer is _yes_ because guess
what scammers are thinking everyday when they wake up? They are thinking _'
how can we look more like a legit business so our payments go through'_.

I say this as someone whose had to go through paypal's painful process several
times in over a decade of use.

~~~
Karunamon
I don't think the problem with Paypal are the payment blocks with no
notification, the problem is their _complete and utter refusal to talk to the
customer about it_.

They have anti-fraud systems. Fine. Fucking let me talk to someone who can put
their fingers on the keyboard and get it sorted out without a front page
article on Hacker News, Reddit, and The Consumerist to shame them into action.

~~~
RSASecure
PayPal has been trying hard to change this image. David Marcus, who took the
helm, has been shifting focus on customer satisfaction. Here is an interesting
article on David Marcus: [http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-
break-it-h...](http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-how-
david-marcus-is-dismantling-paypal-to-save-it/)

~~~
rehabindian
I can tell you from personal experience and experience of 25-30 others here..
Its a smoke screen. The last few people who tried to do what David says to
media have either been canned or now serving in timeout zone. Again the
President means well but culture internally is much worse. Its a company
filled with people whose skills are way past their prime trying to hold on to
what little mileage left. David wants things to change but the middle layer
won't. More often than not they are the ones who make calls on day to day
operations. Many senior execs who tried to get shit done were moved out by
these politicians. Even today diplomacy/politicking is valued in the company
over talent or Data or logic/reasoning.

as far as topic at hand is concerned, MR from Braintree will be working
closely with DM and directly. So expect only good things. Buying Braintree is
a business play. (Just check out their numbers and clientele). PayPal can try
to get clients like AirBnB or Uber but those startups would try every other
bush before PayPal.

Hope this helps

P.S: I work for PayPal and probably one of the strong proponents of it. The
above opinions are purely mine. and No i have not been canned or put in a
timeout box.. yet!

~~~
Silhouette
I've seen similar anecdotes before, but what I don't understand is why
obstructive middle management haven't been shown the door. If it really is a
mid-level problem how can the politicians manage to hold off executive
management? And if they really are the problem, and both the front-line guys
and executive level are willing to change, what reason is there to keep the
naysayers around instead of firing and then promoting from within?

------
tmuir
I'm always amused when I read the statements from newly acquired companies.
They refuse to call it what it is, a purchase, and instead frame it as an
alignment, a partnership, anything that allows them to distract from the fact
that they are no longer autonomous.

~~~
AhtiK
One hardly ever hears the term "takeover" these days :)

~~~
Fuxy
That's probably because we all know what takeover means so they try to
describe it and dace around what it actually is to make it sound better.

It's how you say it not what it is although by my book it's still the same
damn thing.

------
chuckd1356
Congrats to Stripe for all the new users!

~~~
jgalt212
I heard that. As I've said before, people revere the PayPal mafia, but revile
PayPal.

As it's been said by others here, this is certainly good for Stripe because
more than a few Braintree customers will flock their way to avoid PayPal, but
it also creates opportunities for other upstarts in this arena.

That being said, there is a certain amount of lock-in for these products, so
while it's relatively easy for a business to transition their new users/payers
from Braintree to Stripe/others, it's pretty painful to transition existing
users/payers out of Braintree as all existing users would need to re-key their
CC numbers and billing addresses.

~~~
tednaleid
If only PayPal had joined Braintree's "Credit Card Data Portability"
initiative [1]. I'm betting that's dead now with them joining PayPal, if it's
even still active. If it is, get your data out quick before PayPal can lock it
in!

[1]: [https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/open-letter-to-the-
ce...](https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/open-letter-to-the-ceos-of-
paypal-and-authorize-net-help-end-the-credit-card-data-hostage-situation)

~~~
AhtiK
I'm somewhat annoyed that they do not publish the list of providers who have
joined this initiative [1].

[1] [http://www.portabilitystandard.org/](http://www.portabilitystandard.org/)
(FAQ Q #1)

------
jacquesm
The big winner here is not Braintree (though all the founders and current
investors are to be congratulated) but Stripe. PC & Co, keep at it :)

~~~
pc
Thanks! We will :).

(Today belongs to Braintree, as you say -- congrats to all of the folks
connected with the company.)

~~~
jacquesm
Braintree, check, Ogone, Check. Who is next?

~~~
cnale
Klarna

------
chromaton
This has put me off of Braintree and on to Stripe, but not for the reasons you
might suspect. You see, I still want to take PayPal payments from my customers
who prefer it. But it doesn't seem like a good business to have all my eggs in
one basket, and using a competing payment system gives me the ability to
switch PayPal off if they try any shenanigans.

~~~
dangrossman
That's why I only code against Spreedly [1] instead of directly against any
payment processor. One API instead of 53, switch processors just by changing a
variable, and you can securely store customers' payment info without locking
yourself into any processor's vaulting solution either.

1: [https://spreedly.com/](https://spreedly.com/)

~~~
mithras
But instead you are reliant on Spreedly. Looks interesting though.

~~~
dangrossman
Which is a much better thing to be reliant on.

Payment processors are in the risk business -- becoming a risky account to
underwrite, or their making a mistake in evaluating the risk, means you lose
your account, any money that hasn't yet made it to your bank, and any customer
info you have stored. Because the processor bears all the risk for chargebacks
and bankruptcies of its merchants, it's an extremely thin margin business.

Spreedly is in the secure API business. They don't care much about the health
of your business, the risk associated with your transactions, or anything else
the processors care about. They just have to pass around messages and get paid
a fee every time they do. It's a fat margin business.

The risk of losing a Spreedly account is much lower than losing a payment
account. The risk of Spreedly suddenly going out of business is much lower
than the risk of a small merchant account provider/reseller going out of
business. And if you _choose_ to stop relying on Spreedly, they'll hand you
all your customer data (securely) to take elsewhere, which most gateways with
card vaulting refuse to do. It's not a choice of who to commit to, it's
freedom from vendor lock-in.

------
hpvic03
In the long run I suspect that this will be a huge win for Stripe.

~~~
pain_perdu
agreed.

~~~
Ecio78
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...](http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/brothers-vow-not-to-sell-stripe-
web-firm-valued-at-500m-29544203.html)

~~~
rafski
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.

~~~
pc
> _I don 't know if there are other investors than Y Combinator though, there
> might be one that will push for a sale._

We do have other investors, but (luckily) they're as uninterested in selling
as we are. We've always been clear with them that we want to build this for
the long-term.

------
manishsharan
What is the rational behind this move?

From my perspective, Braintree had a good brand ( compared to paypal), locked-
in customer base and sizeable cashflow (my conjecture based on their fees).
Incumbents and first movers in this industry have a huge advantage over
newcomers - so they were not as much at risk from newer start-ups. They were
also risk averse in how they accepted new customers .

Could they not have restructured, focused on serving their existing customers
rather than chasing growth, maybe downsized a bit, and gone for the long run
viability with an IPO in about 5 years?

~~~
programminggeek
They took on a lot of VC and there is no way that an IPO would have valued
Braintree at the level that PayPal did. With the amount of investment they
took on, they needed an acquisition of at least 500-750 million to get the 10x
return their investors expected.

In short, when you take on enough investment, your options are IPO or
acquisition, whatever makes your big investors the happiest.

~~~
ExpiredLink
> _They took on a lot of VC and there is no way that an IPO would have valued
> Braintree at the level that PayPal did._

So actually the VCs aimed the company to be bought by PayPal ... and
succeeded. Seems that most people misunderstood Braintree's business model.

------
shrikant
Looks like Braintree will have to change all their "we're not PayPal!"
marketing now.

~~~
fredley
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.

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

~~~
doubt_me
Is there any evidence of this? Besides 800m in cash

~~~
jfoster
David Marcus has previously acknowledged that PayPal needs to improve:
[http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-
custom...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/09/david-marcus-paypal-customer-
service/)

------
nhangen
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.

~~~
mvboeke
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.

------
rafski
"Speaking to RTÉ News in Dublin, Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison said
he and brother John have no plans to sell the company. He said they already
have experience of selling a company early in their careers and saw what that
involves."

[http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0903/471900-stripe-
laun...](http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/0903/471900-stripe-launch/) The
video interviews with Patrick are worth a look too.

Patrick is 24, his brother is even younger. I am with Stripe from the day they
launched in Ireland, it was easy to choose them over the likes of Braintree
and Paymill who aimed for simplicity but still required quite some
formalities. Also, Paymill is Samwer brothers, a turn-off for some
entrepreneurs and developers.

~~~
jusben1369
"Speaking to RTE News in Dublin, Stripe chief executive Patrick Collison said
he and brother John plan to sell as soon as possible at the largest possible
price". If you can't imagine the opposite quote ever happening then there's no
point putting much weight on the initial one - no matter what the
circumstance.

~~~
jacquesm
Except that that wasn't the quote.

~~~
jusben1369
Perhaps it would have been less snippety to say "What else can they say when
asked?"

------
joshuak
We were just about to add payments to our site, and Braintree was high on the
list to checkout. Any other suggestions in addition to Stripe?

-edit- This seems like a good list: [http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com](http://gatewayindex.spreedly.com)

~~~
dangrossman
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 things like send all Visa and
MasterCard charges to Authorize.net, and all Amex charges to PayPal for the
flat rate, without ever seeing the cardholder data myself. I don't though.]

~~~
ashray
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 ?

~~~
jeffasinger
So you'd have to pay interchange, plus whatever your processor charges on top
of that, which will depend on them, and volume. You can definitely shop around
a little bit, there's probably several local people who can talk you through
it and bring you some offers to the table from various processors, but also
get a quote from people like TSYS, First Data, and Chase Paymentech directly.

I'm remembering fees varying from $.05 to $0.10 and 0.10% to 0.15% on top of
interchange. The visa interchange rates are available at (1) to give you an
idea. You're mostly interested in the eCommerce categories probably, so you'll
be paying 1.80 to 1.95% plus $0.10 on top of whatever you're paying from
you're processor for credit cards, debit cards are cheaper.

Many people that do micropayments will try to combine some transactions
together, in order to save money. That said, you might be interested in paypal
micropayments (2), as they only charge $0.05 + 5%, which for a $2 transaction,
is a big savings.

1: [http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-
interchange-...](http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-
reimbursement-fees-april2013.pdf)

2:
[https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropaym...](https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html)

~~~
ashray
Thanks for the detailed information. That certainly clears things up a bit.

I've been using Paypal micropayments for the past year or so and it's been the
best bet for $2 transactions (I pay 6%+$0.05 for cross border payments). Ends
up being $0.17 per transaction. I haven't come across anything that beats that
by a large enough margin so as to replace Paypal yet.

The only downside is that Paypal is applying the standard 6% fee to $20
transactions as well (as opposed to the lower 2.9% fee), so I either need to
route these transactions to a non-micropayments Paypal account or do something
else with them... this is what I am currently working on solving. The
difference doesn't come out to be much for a $20 transaction but with higher
transaction volume it will certainly stick out as a sore point.

------
jpswade
If you remember Google Checkout has been scrapped and merchants won’t be able
to accept payments after the 20th of November 2013. One of the three companies
Google recommended as a replacement payment gateway was in fact Braintree.

[http://tamebay.com/2013/09/paypal-to-acquire-braintree-
googl...](http://tamebay.com/2013/09/paypal-to-acquire-braintree-google-
checkout-clients.html)

------
Judson
I'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).

~~~
gummify
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.

------
jwblackwell
Well this has put me off ever using them.

~~~
sanswork
Thats ok. I'm pretty sure they won't exist for much longer now anyhow.

------
bdcravens
I'm amused that photo-sharing companies are more valuable than CC payment
processing companies that actually generate revenue.

~~~
jareau
COGS for your standard photosharing app are much lower than for a payment
processor and they don't have to deal with crazy amounts of risk (CC
chargebacks). But yes, I get your point.

------
m4tthumphrey
Ouch. I feel for Braintree customers. I expect many of them chose them
primarily because they were not PayPal.

------
confluence
Anyone got stats on the acquisition split between owning parties
(founders/investors/employees)?

~~~
patio11
People always ask for this, and the answer is always going to be "We won't
disclose that." Publishing the cap table is invariably going to be net
negative for the people on it.

To the limited extent that having rough numbers helps improve your estimation
of what the payoff matrix is if you build a business to where it is worth $800
million: typically, the founders would split several hundred million, most
employees would get $X0,000 to $Y00,000, and exceptionally early employees
plus key executives (CEO, etc) walk away with a few million. The remainder
(several hundred million) goes to the investors.

Braintree's numbers might be different due to their bootstrapped pre-funding
trajectory or due to choices made by the founders, but ultimately their
numbers are their numbers.

------
harel
We are just about to start using BrainTree, for the only reason that they are
not PayPal...

~~~
esw
I've been a Braintree customer for several years and have been really happy
with the service and support, but if I were in your shoes I'd probably take a
hard look at Stripe.

------
billclerico
congrats to the team. building payments is hard (braintree has been at it
since 2007) and it's great to see a successful exit for a solid team & company

------
AhtiK
Title is a bit misleading, Braintree is not acquired by Paypal.

1\. The transaction is planned between eBay and Braintree.

2\. At this point eBay has plans to acquire Braintree (agreed to acquire).

~~~
jfoster
Yeah, but Braintree's CEO is reporting into David Marcus, and all of the
quotes from the eBay side are talking about PayPal. For all intents and
purposes, Braintree has been acquired by PayPal.

------
Vvector
"Braintree" not "Briantree"

~~~
BetaCygni
Maybe it's because the CEO of braintree is called "Bill Ready". Heh.

------
bonemachine
I'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.

~~~
nirmel
Are you incapable of multiplying by a decimal? I wonder how much somehow who
owns 1% of $100 has. Any rough ideas?

~~~
bonemachine
Equity splits are a bit more complicated than that, actually.

Especially when company B buys company A, and in turn is bought by company C.

------
cvburgess
Although I am sticking with Stripe, I hope that they leverage features like
Venmo with PayPal's (rather large) user base - mobile payments are terrible as
it stands.

It'll be interesting to see if large partners (GitHub, AirBnB, etc) stay
onboard through the transition or if they are coerced by competitors.

------
misiti3780
Im happy for them, but you have to admit a lot has changed since this one was
published:

[https://37signals.com/svn/posts/2800-bootstrapped-
profitable...](https://37signals.com/svn/posts/2800-bootstrapped-profitable-
proud-braintree)

------
dcc1
Paypal will kill it, PAYPAL are the absolute worst company in the world and
terrible to for any new businesses who endup having their money "held" for
ridiculous amounts of time, and no customer support.

~~~
jfoster
Why do you think PayPal bought them? It probably wasn't solely for the
userbase, right?

~~~
droopyEyelids
My take:

1) Braintree is a dog fart compared to paypal. They certainly weren't bought
for the user base. (although, their size probably probably affected the choice
between stripe and bt)

2) David Marcus was acquihired from a team of 5 (a 'real startup') and has
been working to startupify paypal. [1] Perhaps he thinks Braintree could be an
example to the rest of the company.

3) Venmo is the most successful peer to peer mobile payments app. Peer to peer
mobile payments will transition into wallet, and then banking. It's an
important position to own.

4) Paypal's customer base is 'aging' like yahoo's has been. Braintree has a
younger, hipper market segment (than paypal).

5) Stripe is cooler than braintree, but another order of magnitude smaller,
plus they don't have the white-glove support of Braintree. From what I've
heard, DM is continuously frustrated by Paypal's support. I believe BT's
support is seen as a learning opportunity for PayPal. Also, Braintree was able
to successfully copy all Stripe's innovations. Braintree has large, mature
intl. presence, too.

Not an expert but thats my attempt to be 'objective'

[1][http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-
it-h...](http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-how-david-
marcus-is-dismantling-paypal-to-save-it/)

~~~
Flenser
Venmo is also used by Simple[1] [2] so it's already in banking. That may have
influenced things. If Simple get big then Paypal could end up processing a
significant amount of banking transactions.

[1] [https://simple.com/](https://simple.com/) [2]
[http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/20/mobile-payments-are-one-
thi...](http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/20/mobile-payments-are-one-third-of-
braintrees-business/)

------
Osiris
I'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.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Have you heard of Venmo Touch? It allows payments with one click/tap so long
as you're "cookied" with a Venmo token.

------
sweeps
We were in the middle of migrating from PayPal to Braintree for a marketplace
solution. Anyone have documentation or comments on Stripe vs.
Balancedpayments.com vs. Braintree for marketplaces?

~~~
jareau
Hi, I'm one of Balanced's co-founders. You might find this Quora post helpful
[1]. Each company you mentioned chimes in about their relative strengths. From
the Balanced side, here's why I think we stand out:

Balanced has been doing nothing but marketplace payments since early 2011, and
have a history of coming out with the functionality most useful to
marketplaces (and crowdfunders) 6-12 months before anyone else:

\- Next-day payouts (same-day for WF)

\- Stand-alone ACH payouts

\- White-label merchant onboarding

\- Dynamic soft-descriptor control

We've got a lot more coming out soon, and as an open company, you'll have a
voice in exactly what we build.

That said, I'm not sure what your specific needs are, but shoot me an email at
jkwade@balancedpayments.com and we can figure it out. Thanks!

[1] [http://www.quora.com/With-the-release-of-Braintree-
Marketpla...](http://www.quora.com/With-the-release-of-Braintree-Marketplaces-
is-there-any-actual-difference-between-Braintree-Stripe-WePay-and-Balanced)

------
JohnGB
Time to look for a new payment provider. Braintree stood out with their
amazing service and support. Paypal stand out for their complete lack of
competent service and support.

------
sergiotapia
Boo! Paypal sucks and is a terrible company. I only use it when I'm forced to
because I do not have access to international credit cards here in South
America (where I live).

Too bad.

~~~
mamcx
I feel the pain!

I'm building a iPad POS and finally forget about provide credit card payments
for my latin-america customers (except using paypal).

------
richardlblair
A lot of haters.

They had a successful exit, and for a good chunk of cash. This is a big win
for the Braintree team. It's always good when people can cash out their
shares.

------
fideloper
Did they want Venmo for it's ability to make payments online, or to kill
competition that lets people give/receive payments "for free".

------
hayksaakian
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.

------
itchitawa
It's a pity all these "better-than-Paypal" companies only serve
US/Canada/sometimes Europe. Paypal owns the whole rest of the world! Maybe
they can now help internationalize Braintree instead of imposing their badness
onto it. Also sad that you can't sell hair extensions with Braintree :?(

~~~
jareau
Click the "Select your country" button at the bottom of Braintree's site. It
looks like they're available in US, CAN, AUS, and 40+ countries in Europe, but
yes, PayPal owns the rest of the world, could help Braintree expand faster.

------
saneshark
Rather than bickering about how this is bad for the market, why don't you
folks write to the DOJ or your congressmen and voice your opposition?

The DOJ rightfully stopped the AT&T / T-Mobile merger in its tracks, who is to
say that they wouldn't do something similar in this case?

~~~
dangrossman
Because there are _hundreds_ of options for credit card processing in the US,
as opposed to a handful of cell providers for some regions. There's no risk of
creating a monopoly or significantly reducing competition here.

------
prezjordan
Just cashed out all my money on Venmo.

------
ahallock
I hope Paypal handles this better than PayflowPro, which is a seriously
neglected product acquired from Verisign . No support on the weekends, even if
your account is having technical issues that disrupt customer payments.

------
sailfast
While I like to see more competition in the marketplace, I think this is a
smart move for Paypal and also a big milestone for a Chicago startup exit.
Congratulations are in order to the Braintree team.

------
pyfish
Wasn't Braintree owned by Wells Fargo, the worst bank ever? Yet Braintree
itself was still awesome during that time. Let's hope that awesomeness
continues under Paypal.

~~~
jareau
No on the footer of Braintree's site it states: > Braintree is a registered
ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A

This means Braintree is using WF as a banking service provider, but is not
owned by them.

~~~
pyfish
Cool thanks for clarifying

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artursapek
I wonder how much Paypal has badgered Stripe for an acquisition.

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BallinBige
Braintree is more developed as a business

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janlukacs
We've just signed up with braintree the other day trying to flee PayPal
(somehow i thought the deal won't go through). Let's hope for the best :)

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Demiurge
Sight, will there ever be a PayPal alternative?

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joeblau
I've suggested Stripe, but I know they have some geolocation restrictions.

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TomGullen
Congrats to Braintree! My only concern is this is reducing competition in a
market that desperately needs more competition.

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geori
WOW! Didn't see that one coming.

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

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methodin
Let's hope Paypal adopts more of Braintree's practices than vice-versa.

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jval
Wow, if Braintree is worth $800M.. what must Stripe be worth?

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bti
Around 500M.

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dschiptsov
Now it runs so smoothly..)

Btw, I think YC already peaked, isn't it?)

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CptCodeMonkey
That's too bad.

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nakedrobot2
I guess that's what Paypal used my "rolling reserve" for.

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digerata
Who gives a shit as long as Stripe is still around.

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madaxe
Imagine how upset they'll be when they thought they were buying Braintree, but
got some guy called Brian's tree.

~~~
jwblackwell
It appears Mr Brian Tree is actually an actor -
[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871672/](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0871672/)

