EBay agrees $800m Braintree acquisition

PayPal parent eBay has confirmed that it has agreed an $800 million cash deal to buy Chicago-based payments start-up Braintree.

Founded in 2007, Braintree enables online and mobile businesses to accept card payments. The firm processes more than $12 billion in payments annually for over 4000 merchants, including Github, Shopify and Angry Birds creator Rovio.

Once the acquisition closes - expected in the fourth quarter - Braintree will operate as a separate service within PayPal and continue to be led by CEO Bill Ready. The rest of the start-up's management and employees are also expected to stay on.

Importantly for PayPal, the acquisition gives it access to Venmo, the mobile commerce outfit Braintree acquired last year for $26.2 million. Venmo stores users' card details so that they can pay with a single click for in-app purchases at partner merchants.

"Bill Ready and his team add complementary talent and technology that we believe will help accelerate PayPal's global leadership in mobile payments," says eBay CEO John Donahoe.

Related Companies

PayPal Braintree Payment Solutions

Channels

Retail banking Payments

Keywords

Cards Mobile & online banking E-commerce Findex Mergers and acquisitions

Comments: (1)

Mike McCormack - PALMA ADVISORS LLC - Fort Lauderdale 26 September, 2013, 20:24

Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up

0 likes

Another typo in the first paragraph of this article too. Is anyone proofreading your material?

"The firm processes more than $12 billion in payments annually for over 4000 merchants $4 billion".... What?

Leaving all that aside, the potential multiples on this deal and the all cash structure suggest Braintree scored BIG.

Assuming a net gross margin of 80 bp (on $12 Billion sales), the $800 million cash purchase works out as an 8.3 net-margin multiple. The EBITDA multiple seems as if it could be 25-30x.

It's interesting that mainline bank and third party acquirers seemed to never get into the bidding, which is a real big mistake. Most of the traditional acquirers are puttering along making use of archaic costly processing and accounting systems, making tiny tid-bit innovations around the permitters of their systems and services that have little meaningful effect on their market positions or long-term viability.