Braintree
Braintree is PayPal's card-and-wallet payment gateway, acquired by PayPal for $800M in 2013 and rebranded "PayPal Enterprise Payments" in 2025 (the Braintree name persists across docs/SDKs). Proprietary SaaS, no monthly fee: US standard rate is 2.89% + $0.29 per card/wallet transaction, ACH Direct Debit 0.75% capped at $5, plus 1% for internationally-issued cards and 1% for non-USD currency conversion (per paypal.com's official Braintree fees page, mid-2026). Technically: client SDKs for JS/iOS/Android, server libraries in 6+ languages, a GraphQL API, and tokenized Drop-in UI/Hosted Fields for PCI-scope reduction; a native Recurring Billing engine ships at no extra fee, unlike Stripe Billing's added 0.7%. Scale: 25B transactions/year, $1.53T total payment volume (2023), 200+ markets. Current version/status: rebranded "PayPal Enterprise Payments" (2025); Braintree name still used in SDKs/docs. License: proprietary SaaS. Pricing: No monthly fee; US standard rate 2.89% + $0.29/transaction, ACH Direct Debit 0.75% capped at $5, +1% for international cards, +1% for non-USD currency conversion (mid-2026). Maintained by PayPal Holdings, Inc. (acquired Braintree 2013).
Pick Braintree if you're already on PayPal rails and want PayPal/Venmo/Apple Pay/Google Pay wallets plus recurring billing bundled free into the processing fee — Stripe Billing tacks on a 0.7% fee on top of card processing for the same job. Skip it for EU-heavy consumer card volume: Mollie's 1.80%+€0.25 EEA-consumer rate beats Braintree's flat 2.89%+$0.29, with native SEPA support. Skip it for complex multi-gateway subscription logic: Chargebee sits on top of Braintree/Stripe/Adyen and handles dunning, proration, and revenue recognition Braintree doesn't touch. Honest weakness: PayPal's own CEO and CFO described a deliberate "price-to-value" pivot on the Q4 2024 earnings call (Feb 2025) and reiterated it through 2025 — shifting Braintree away from volume growth toward larger, more profitable enterprise contracts, so new small-merchant accounts get comparatively less priority than they did pre-2025. Known weakness: PayPal's CEO and CFO described a deliberate "price-to-value" strategic pivot starting with the Q4 2024 earnings call (reported Feb 2025) and reiterated through 2025, deprioritizing lower-margin small-merchant growth in favor of larger enterprise contracts.
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