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'
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) 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...