Braintree, a PayPal service vs. Venmo for Business

Braintree is a lower cost alternative to many of the options business owners have through their bank. However, they will need to be techy or be working with a developer to set up. The setup and backend isn't as user friendly as alternatives. Braintree is a great option if you'll need to manually type in credit card details. Banks will sometimes charge a lot more for that option. The manual option is nice if your clients aren't as tech savvy and prefer to pay over the phone than to pay on your website.

Incentivized

I had a customer who wanted me to do his wife's birthday party. I sent him the estimate and he gave me a deposit from his Venmo account. When the party was done, he forgot to pay for a week. I reminded him with an invoice and he sent a deposit. It wasn't immediately deposited, but it [arrived the next day].

• Braintree has excellent integration with the BigCommerce platform. The switch of our previous payment processing gateway to Braintree was very easy and only required a few clicks.
• Tying into Braintree's BigCommerce integration, for company's like ours that are on the BigCommerce enterprise plan, Braintree's rates for BigCommerce enterprise customers are extremely competitive and saved us money.
• Braintree has a pretty easy to use portal that can be accessed through the same login we use for PayPal which we are using in conjunction with Braintree with ease.
• I've only had to call Braintree twice and my customer service issues were handled extremely quickly and easily.

Incentivized

• QR codes for quick payment
• A secure account for customers
• Venmo integrates with QuickBooks

• Not a very good subscription management platform for a Saas business, but they make up for it on the API with others that are
• Doesn't have a lot of additional features, but that's what you'd expect out of a payment processor
• Very expensive per transaction, but the reality is that any processor who helps early stage companies accept online payments are expensive.

Incentivized

• Take out transaction fee. They are not PayPal
• More understanding with bitcoin
• Invoicing would be a good feature

There's a huge cost in migrating payment providers, and we're very happy with Braintree so far.

Incentivized

It just works.

Incentivized

Their support is a joke. There's nothing "supportive" about them. Every time I call in with an issue no one has an answer or even a recommendation. I am put on hold and no one ever comes back. It's time to find another processor.

Incentivized

It is simple for a developer to do.

Incentivized

Braintree is better at handling international payments and supporting a variety of payment methods that can all be configured from the same dashboard. Braintree supports PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc. in addition to simply credit cards like Stripe. Braintree has a vault of existing user payment methods so the user doesn't have to re-enter their information each time.

Incentivized

PayPal has more work items for businesses. It has invoicing, time tracking, and marketing strategies. I could [use] PayPal to run my business like I do with QuickBooks. Affiliates with other business is crazy. Plus, they also carry debit and credit cards for business and personal purposes. Venmo is the little brother [of PayPal].

• Simplified billing so we spend less time on it
• Saved $20 a month or more when compared to alternatives that have a monthly charge.
• It gives peace of mind because we know that any service we use in the future will likely integrate with Braintree

Incentivized

• Give customers reassurance
• Secure money account
• More marketing strategies