Braintree
Also a provider — view Braintree’s profile →“Can PayPal's enterprise payment rails become the default global processor for the world's largest merchants?”
Founded2007
HQChicago, Illinois, United States
FoundersBryan Johnson
Total raised$69M (pre-acquisition)
Latest roundAcquired by PayPal, September 2013
Valuation$800M (acquisition price)
IndustryInfrastructure / Payments
The story
Founded 2007 in Chicago as a developer-friendly payment gateway and merchant account for online businesses. Acquired Venmo in 2012 and was itself acquired by PayPal in 2013 for $800M, becoming PayPal's enterprise-grade payment processing arm. By 2026, Braintree has been rebranded/absorbed as 'PayPal Enterprise Payments' inside the PayPal Open platform — the same product, but positioned as PayPal's end-to-end enterprise payments stack rather than a standalone brand.
Product timeline
2007
Founded in Chicago by Bryan Johnson as an online payments processor for merchants.· banking
2011
Raised $34M Series A from Accel — first outside funding.· funding
2012
Acquired Venmo for $26.2M.· acquisition
2013
Acquired by PayPal (then part of eBay) for $800M.· acquisition
2026
Braintree rebranded as PayPal Enterprise Payments (part of the PayPal Open platform).· pivot
Acquisitions
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Braintree
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
5 layers disclosed in Braintree’s embedded-finance stack
Money movement
in the full report
Card network
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
9 more providers across 4 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.