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Braintree, a PayPal service

Braintree, a PayPal service

Overview

What is Braintree, a PayPal service?

Braintree, a Paypal service and subsidiary, is a billing platform which stores credit card data directly from the merchant’s systems on secure servers, and it allows for cards to be recharged or refunded . Braintree also supports international payments. …

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Braintree is widely used as a card processor for website shopping carts, particularly in platforms like Spree Commerce. Users have praised …
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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Product Details

What is Braintree, a PayPal service?

Braintree, a PayPal service Video

Payment Basics: Payments 101

Braintree, a PayPal service Integrations

Braintree, a PayPal service Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Braintree, a Paypal service and subsidiary, is a billing platform which stores credit card data directly from the merchant’s systems on secure servers, and it allows for cards to be recharged or refunded . Braintree also supports international payments. Pricing is 2.9% plus a 30c transaction fee.

Maxio, CheddarGetter, and Recurly are common alternatives for Braintree, a PayPal service.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 1.6.

The most common users of Braintree, a PayPal service are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(57)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Braintree is widely used as a card processor for website shopping carts, particularly in platforms like Spree Commerce. Users have praised its ability to seamlessly integrate with these systems, allowing for smooth and secure transactions. Moreover, Braintree serves as the primary payment provider gateway in many tech departments, enabling organizations to consolidate their payment processing into one interface with support for multiple payment methods. This has proven to be advantageous for businesses looking to streamline their operations and offer customers a range of convenient payment options.

Another key use case of Braintree is for charging customers for services through recurring monthly subscriptions. This feature allows businesses to implement custom plans and offer discounts, thereby accommodating various customer needs and boosting loyalty. Additionally, Braintree is utilized to sell gift cards with different durations, facilitating one-off payments that are charged as part of the purchase process. These use cases have helped organizations generate substantial revenue through Braintree without significant issues.

Braintree's ability to enable credit card payments without the need for PCI compliance has also been highly valued by users. This feature saves businesses time and resources by alleviating the burden of complying with rigorous security standards. Furthermore, Braintree's seamless integration with popular platforms like Freshbooks.com and Big Commerce has made it a go-to choice in various industries. Its robust functionality and reliability have empowered businesses across the board to process payments efficiently and effectively.

However, some users have reported challenges when using Braintree. Account reviews and cancellations due to fraudulent activity have been a concern for some organizations. Additionally, there have been instances of failed transactions and spam issues experienced by certain users. Despite these occasional setbacks, the majority of users have found Braintree to be a reliable solution for their payment processing needs.

Customer service support provided by Braintree has received mixed reviews from users. Some reported unhelpful and untrained support representatives in certain cases. However, it is important to note that experiences can vary, and other users may have had positive interactions with the support team. Overall, Braintree has proven to be a versatile payment processing solution used by various organizations to process payments securely and efficiently across different platforms and industries.

Clean and intuitive interface: Several users have praised Braintree for its clean and simple interface, stating that it makes the platform easy to understand and navigate. This positive feedback suggests that many reviewers appreciate the intuitive design of Braintree, which enhances their user experience.

Flexible payment intervals: Many users have mentioned the value they find in Braintree's flexible payment interval options. This feature allows businesses to receive money at various intervals that suit their needs. The ability to customize payment schedules is highly valued by these customers, as it provides them with greater control over their cash flow.

Easy implementation for developers: Numerous reviewers have highlighted how easy it is to implement Braintree for developers. They mention that the platform provides clear documentation and resources, making integration a smooth process. This positive feedback indicates that Braintree offers comprehensive support to developers, enabling them to easily integrate the platform into their systems.

Cons:

  1. Limited reporting features: Some users have expressed that they would like to see additional features in the front screen reporting, such as the ability to vary the time period being looked at and other simple analytics.
  2. Lack of API access for discount and plan creation: Several reviewers have mentioned that the lack of API access for discount and plan creation requires manual work on the web console, which can be inconvenient.
  3. Difficulty configuring charge details in bank statement: A number of users have found it difficult to configure charge details in the customer's bank statement, which may cause confusion or issues with reconciliation.

From the user reviews, it is recommended to consider using Stripe instead of Braintree if PayPal support is not necessary. Users find Stripe to be a better alternative for payment gateway needs. Additionally, users suggest exploring Braintree as a payment gateway solution and mention its solid platform with good API coverage, integration options, and documentation. Some users advise against using Braintree as a payment gateway and recommend looking into other services like Stripe or Recurly for recurring billing solutions. They suggest comparing Braintree with other options to evaluate the best fit. Overall, reviewers suggest considering other alternatives or evaluating specific requirements before deciding on Braintree.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-14 of 14)
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Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Paypal for about 15 years and added Braintree, a PayPal service 4 years ago. We've pulled millions in revenue through their gateways without issue. Recently they requested a review of our account because of one fraudulent user changing 3 times on a single day using a card with matching address and security information - something no merchant can fight against. The total was only a tiny fraction of yearly income and was immediately refunded to the card once the fraud was known.

Braintree, a PayPal service started sending emails to us requesting bank statements essentially telling us "we need to verify you are worth the risk for us to continue working with you" and those emails were triggering our pfishing filter so those emails didn't get to anyone. After 3 weeks without us knowing about the issue or a single phone call they canceled our account.

This was also on a Friday so we were affected for several days because that department doesn't work on the weekends. You tell me, would you trust this gateway with your livelihood that, after 15 years, still doesn't trust you? We won't. We have canceled all services across all 8 companies with Paypal and Braintree, a PayPal service. In my opinion, they are only looking out for themselves and could care less of the impact they have on companies or their employees.
  • Paypal is well known
  • You can log into Braintree, a PayPal service using Paypal credentials
  • In my experience, they do not call their long term customers when there is an issue and instead rely exclusively on emails which are often flagged as spam or pfishing.
  • In my experience, severs connections without speaking to a rep in the company thus hijacking the company revenue on their own time.
They canceled our account after 15 years without speaking to a rep and after only 3 weeks of sending emails (one per week) that required some bank statements. We were unaware of the emails as they were triggering our pfishing filter. We have been using them for over a decade and, in my experience, there is still they have zero trust even after we moved millions through their gateway, they pulled the plug and, in my opinion, couldn't care less. They are too big for small to medium businesses in our opinion now. They offered to reinstate but this was much too big for us to go back - we found a competitor quite easily with lower rates. I suggest you definitely shop around for best rates, nobody cares anymore if you have Paypal or not like back in the day.

Worst experience from a bank/gateway in our 20-year history.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Braintree, a PayPal servicefor processing payments, both for recurring subscriptions as well as one-off transactional payments. Braintree holds our customer payment information in their "vault." We moved from using two separate payment processors (Stripe + PayPal) into unifying our payment processing in one interface with one vendor, Braintree. We are able to accept payments with multiple payment methods including Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, etc.
  • drop-in payment widget provides a best-in-class UI
  • accept multiple payment methods with a single implementation
  • a single dashboard to manage all user subscriptions
  • Coupon management is not very good and we had to build our own discount system
  • Setup is quite challenging and there is not a seamless migration from existing payment systems
  • Customer support is very slow to respond to requests
Braintree is a good payment processor if you are looking to accept multiple payment methods across multiple geographies and localizations. It is also a good place to keep a single source of truth for customer payments and keeping payment methods on file. If you are only in one geography or would be fine with accepting only a single payment type, Braintree is not a good choice.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company's software (an events management system) integrates with Braintree to allow our customers to process credit card payments through our app. It is used by our support team, product team and development team. It is a big selling factor for our customers to be able to process payments securely using the Braintree integration.
  • Responsiveness of their support team/help investigating issues
  • Easy set-up for adding new customers
  • Customization of user access
  • We have had multiple account managers over the years, however, lack of communication when our contact changed. This caused some problems when trying to get questions answered.
Braintree is well suited if you are looking to add a PCI compliant payment integration to your software. It allows our customers to connect their existing merchant processor to our app. In turn, we are able to charge a processing fee and make additional revenue off of the integration.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Braintree is used by TCC as an additional payment system for tuition and any other purchases that the school requires. It is used throughout the entire campus.

It was supposed to make collecting payments more efficient but it has so many failed transactions and generates spam. The charge-backs are worse than anything and if you try calling customer service, you get untrained representatives with attitude. It came highly recommended which was ridiculous. Braintree solves no business problems...it creates more!
  • It's available for global coverage.
  • It has 24/7 support.
  • It has very easy billing.
  • It allows for split payments
  • They have 24/7 customer service but their representatives lack the knowledge and skills to be of assistance.
  • They boast of superior cyber protection but my department experienced a breach in security twice in one month.
  • There are way too many charge-backs with very little effort on Braintree's part to be of assistance.
I would never recommend Braintree to a friend nor an enemy. They do not practice what they preach. Their customer service (which is suppose to be superior) is one star out of five and that is being generous. Every single time I call in with a problem no one seems to have an answer to my problem. I am put on hold until I hang up because no one ever comes back on the line. If I can't depend on support for a product I am paying for then I will not recommend it nor will I keep using it.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Braintree across our company's eCommerce website as our payment processing gateway. As we are an eCommerce company, we needed a way to charge our customers and after having tried many options this works best as well as having a direct integration.
  • 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.
  • Braintree's fraud detection could use work, we had a fraudulent payment that was not caught by Braintree's system but we were able to quickly revert it.
  • Their support team is in Chicago I believe, which was an issue for us when we had to call in at 2 pm and found out that their office was closed.
  • Coming from Authorize.Net, the control panel of Braintree is less robust.
I highly recommend Braintree as it is a very solid payment processing portal that plays well with other payment processors that we use, though Braintree is our main payment processor. It is powered by Paypal which we have used for many years and Braintree has an excellent integration with BigCommerce which I cannot stress enough, if you are using the BigCommerce sales platform you owe it to your business to link it to Braintree.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Braintree as our Big Commerce payment gateway. It provides seamless integration with Big Commerce and various payment methods such as Amazon Pay or PayPal.
  • Multiple payment types
  • Reliable system
  • Very easy to use
  • None
Small businesses.
July 06, 2018

Braintree

Bridgette Reynolds | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to track our client's payment methods. It's mostly our customer success team using it. We have been able to solve multiple issues like canceling, refunding, and voiding payments.
  • Being able to void transactions before they cross over to a refund
  • Being able to add discounts to users profiles
  • Running reports
  • Reports aren't always as detailed as we like them to be.
  • Would like to be able to have better search functions
I have only been using Braintree for a year or so now, but have found it very useful and the teams we spoke to are great! I would highly recommend this platform.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our entire organization uses Braintree to process credit card payments from our clients. Particularly the monthly auto-pay clients. Braintree automatically bills them every month and has quite a few subscription options for different kinds of packages, timelines, and discounts you may offer subscribers. We are also able to manually key in transactions which is helpful because we have clients who prefer to pay over the phone. We work with clients across the country and internationally as well so an in-office card reader isn't ideal.
  • Low rates on their credit card processing fees
  • No monthly payment to use them.
  • Recurring payments is one of their most important features
  • Has integration options with many online shopping carts
  • The backend is basic and not user friendly for most users
  • They used to offer no processing fees for your first year before Paypal bought them
  • It is developer focused. So the average person may have trouble setting it up or using it
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.
Brad Henderson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Braintree is used for payment processing but only people trusted with payments have access to it. Because we use Chargebee we don't interface a whole lot with Braintree (as you would expect out of a payment processor) but where we do it works great for us. It allows us to take a credit card payment without becoming PCI compliant which would be almost impossible for an early stage startup.
  • Extremely reliable which is incredibly important for payment processing
  • Accepts all payments types we need to be able to accept from all around the world, which is very important for an international company like ours
  • Has a great, easy to use API for building out additional functionality that Braintree itself doesn't support
  • 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.
Braintree is great as a reliable, easy to use payment processing platform. They have a great API for anything they themselves don't do very well, but it's not the best as a subscription management platform. If you're a big company you probably just want to do your own processing because you'll save A LOT of money on processing costs if you can negotiate a much better rate than Braintree offers.
Brandon Barnhart | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Braintree in conjunction with Freshbooks.com to process our credit card merchant services. The nice thing about it is that you had lots of configurations you could use to enforce security on your own customers' accounts. Funds processed through Braintree hit our account the same day. This is a huge plus for small businesses that don't want to have their money held up for 3-5 days (like those other processing services).
  • It was easy set it and forget it.
  • Money settled in our account very quickly.
  • Not all companies support the use of Braintree. I wish there was more back-end support on some of the sites we wanted to use. This is more about the sites we want to use and less about Braintree, but it's worth mentioning.
Credit card online business would do great with this as a merchant services platform.
Miguel Parramón Teixidó | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used in the tech department, as our primary payment provider gateway. We use to to charge our customers for our service via a recurring monthly subscription, with discounts and custom plans. We also sell gift cards of our service, in 3, 6 and 12 month varieties, charged via Braintree as one-off payments.
  • Once it is set up, it has not given us almost any problem.
  • Allows customization of most parameters.
  • Offers drop-in forms (although we don't use them), and also custom ones.
  • They do not provide API access to discount and plan creation, so we have to do it by hand on their web console.
  • It's hard to configure the charge detail in the customer's bank statement.
  • Their web UI logs out really fast. It's annoying to have to re-login every few minutes.
Braintree excels both for services that are suited for a recurring payment system as well as for one-off payments, so whether you offer a service or a product, it will solve your needs. Since it is highly customizable in terms of discounts and plans, promotions can be set up exactly the way you want them. They also support working with multiple currencies.
Cameron Read | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Braintree is simply a card processor for our website shopping cart - Spree commerce. Since we implemented it it has been bought by PayPal which is no bad thing. We needed a card processor as well as PayPal as we do need to repatriate foreign currency to our domestic bank accounts in the original currency where it is USD, GBP or Euro. PayPal only allows you to withdraw money in your domestic currency and therefore forces an unfavourable exchange rate transaction.
  • The interface is clean and simple; so easy to understand.
  • They will send you the money at a variety of intervals to suit the business.
  • Easy for our developers to implement.
  • The front screen reporting could be improved - just a couple of extra features such as being able to vary the time period being looked at and other simple analytics.
  • I feel strongly that it would be easy and useful to have some kind of ready cash in transit visual by destination bank account.
  • No other points - it just sits there and works.
It's a good basic utility.
Cristian Vitales Muñoz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Braintree is used across the whole organization to process all the payments on our platform.
  • Control panel
  • Integration API
  • No fees before you get a lot of MRR
  • Automatic notifications when a transaction fails
  • More easy to use API
  • Accept as a default American Express cards
I can't think of specific scenario where braintree is less appropriate.
Gerard Compte | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have a fremium business and Braintree, helps to run the payment method. We started with Paypal, and then Braintree was acquired by Paypal. Then it was very easy for us to accept card payments for all over the world with the trust of Paypal. We love how easy is to implement
  • Web implementation is easy.
  • Good price.
  • It's connected with PayPal.
  • Braintree does not accept American Express.
  • They do not have a simple promotional code. With PayPal, any salesman, could do a special discount and implement it. With Braintree it's difficult to create new plans.
  • Create buttons and add them in the emails.
If you have a fremium business... Braintree is 100% recommended. You also have Stripe, but as we are a startup the price is lower and it gave us the power to start with no extra cost. It takes a very small percentage of every transaction. We love their service and attention.
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