How We’re Delivering on Our Commitments to Our Customers and Powering the Future of Commerce

Having completed our first full year as part of PayPal, I wanted to share an update with our customers on the progress we’ve made toward our goal of building a platform that will transform commerce around the world and power the next generation of innovators.

With this goal in mind, we launched our v.zero SDK as the foundation for payments with Braintree and released more than 10 products and features last year. As eBay Inc CEO John Donahoe described in our most recent quarterly earnings call, Braintree’s, v.zero is becoming the foundation for PayPal’s merchant platform. All of the things we accomplished in 2014 with the help of our customers and partners, contributed to a remarkable year:

  • Braintree's merchant base grew more than 2x in 2014.

  • Braintree nearly tripled the reach of its platform in 2014, growing total transactions to 2.8x the prior year.

  • Braintree Authorized Payment Volume in 2014 was $22.8 billion, more than doubling from 2013.

  • Braintree's mobile transactions grew 4x from Q4 2013 to Q4 2014.

  • Braintree had 104 million cards on file for single-click/repeat purchase in Q4 (up 22% QoQ).

  • Venmo processed $2.4 billion in transactions in 2014.

Our early bets on the importance of mobile and the growing consumer demand to be able to pay seamlessly -- inclusive of all relevant payment methods, currencies and digital wallets -- are clearly becoming the standard. Braintree now supports credit, debit, PayPal (with 162 million global active customers), Venmo, Apple Pay (enabling merchants like Eventbrite, HotelTonight and Houzz to accept Apple Pay) and bitcoin. We also launched One Touch payments with PayPal -- the fastest, safest and easiest way to pay on a mobile device across Android and iOS. Innovators including Airbnb, Boxed and Jane.com have all enabled One Touch, with many reporting double-digit growth on mobile as a result.

In addition to helping increase conversions, we want to empower developers and startups to accept payments as fast as possible. In November, we launched instant payments -- rolling it out first to our European customers -- enabling merchants to start accepting payments with only an email, URL and short business description. With instant payments, we also extended our 50,000 in fee free payments program to our European merchants.

Equally important to seamless payments is secure payments. That’s why v.zero allows merchants across the more than 40 markets Braintree supports to enable tools like account updatersimplified chargebacks and advanced fraud prevention with the flip of a switch.

We also continued to innovate on the Venmo front, which processed $2.4 billion last year. We announced new tools including TouchID login to Venmo, @mentions to enhance the social sharing experience, and the ability to link bank accounts on Venmo using only a username and password.

At the start of 2014, Braintree and PayPal’s developer teams became one. Together, we hosted pitch hop competitions, Battle Hacks, opened additional Start Tank offices to help startups get off the ground and expanded Startup BluePrint to reach even more startups around the globe. We also gave back to the developer community by partnering with Facebook’s FbStart program, giving startups in the program access to Braintree’s tools and $50,000 in fee free processing.

It’s been a busy year, but none of this could happen without our customers -- who trust us, inspire us and push us to innovate even faster. We’re working on a lot of exciting things that we’ll be sharing with you in the coming months to help further fuel innovation and support our customers as they forge into new markets and disrupt existing industries. We love hearing from you, so feel free to reach out to us at @braintree or support@braintreepayments.com.

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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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