PayPal confirms Braintree purchase

eBay have announced that they’re definitely acquiring Braintree, confirming last weeks rumour, and will pay around $800 million in cash.

Braintree are growing fast now handling more than $4b annually in mobile transactions, which is a 4x increase in the last twelve months. They are also handling more than $12b in total annual volume (they previously announced $10b in transaction volume in July). Braintree also have a set of mobile-specific client libraries to make integration easy for merchants.

It’s a logical fit for PayPal who are fast expanding their mobile offerings with PayPal Here, PayPal Check In and PayPal Beacon.

eBay say that Braintree will continue to operate as a separate service under the continued leadership of Braintree CEO Bill Ready who will now report to PayPal President, David Marcus.

What’s really interesting is where this leaves Google Checkout merchants. Having dumped the service, Google are still referring merchants to Braintree, now owned by their arch rivals PayPal and must be kicking themselves. Still in fairness Google Wallet is a mess with no solution available for UK retailers and Braintree (whether owned by PayPal or not) is a better solution currently than Google.