Braintree Teaming Up with PayPal

A few weeks ago, when media speculation surfaced that Braintree might be in conversations with potential acquirers, I responded with a blog post stating unequivocally that our commitment to creating a payment platform that will transform commerce around the world was stronger than ever.

So given today’s announcement that Braintree will join PayPal, what’s changed?

Nothing.

And everything.

First and foremost, Braintree’s vision for the future of payments and commitment to great service has not—and will not—change. From the start, our goal has been to provide developers and entrepreneurs with easy access to the sophisticated payment tools they need to build beautiful, next-generation commerce experiences – whether on mobile, across international borders or in wholly new areas of commerce such as marketplaces and the sharing economy.  We’ve also placed the highest value on great service and thoughtful interaction with our customers.

These are precisely the things about Braintree that PayPal respects the most. Throughout my discussions with PayPal president David Marcus and his leadership team, I’ve been deeply impressed by how closely their vision for the future of payments aligns with ours, and by the strength of their commitment to transforming customer service at PayPal.

This is part of the reason that we’re so excited to join PayPal as a separate service. It means we’ll have the autonomy to continue to work the way we always have. We’ll continue to provide excellent customer service, thoughtful risk management and great APIs. Our teams and our culture will remain intact since we’ll continue to set direction for both. And we’ll work relentlessly for our customers and be inspired by their successes and their innovation as we always have.

But just as important are the things that will change. By joining with PayPal, we’ll be able to expand more quickly around the world. We’ll have more tools to offer to our customers through our developer platform. The universe of consumers that we can reach with our services that make it easy for people to pay on a mobile device will expand significantly. Simply put, the resources and scale that only PayPal offers will enable us to move forward with greater speed, broader reach, and higher ambition.  We’ll be able to change the way people buy and sell and enable the experiences that others build in ways that we’ve dreamed of and aspired to for years.

Together, all of these things made the opportunity to become a part of PayPal too good to pass up—not because of what it means for us, but because of what it will enable us to deliver to our customers – the developers, dreamers, builders and early-adopters of the world.

We’ve been inspired by the beautiful new commerce experiences that others have built on our platform.  We’ve seen those experiences change people’s lives – both the people that use them every day as well as the entrepreneurs that build them.  We’re privileged that many of the world’s most innovative commerce companies run on our platform. But we’re just getting started. The entrepreneurs and developers of the world have only just begun to build an entire next generation of commerce experiences and we want to give them all the tools and support they need to do so.  By teaming up with PayPal, we believe we can provide a platform for commerce unlike any other.

This is an exciting step for Braintree – not because we’ve hit a milestone but because we’re taking a bold step toward the future we want to build.  We’re excited that David and the team at PayPal share that vision for the future and that we’re going to be working together to build it.

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Bill Ready Bill is the SVP, Global Head of Merchant and Next-Gen Commerce at PayPal. Previously, Ready was the CEO of Braintree, leading the company through the 2013 acquisition by PayPal for $800 million. More posts by this author

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