Image taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24292894
Braintree was recently acquired by eBay Inc for $800 million in a bid to strengthen PayPal’s presence on mobile devices. Paypal, a subsidiary of eBay, is an online payment platform which facilitates money transfers online.
eBay plans to use Venmo, an application by Braintree which lets customers make payments via mobile deivices, as a platform for expansion into the mobile payments industry. Following the acquisition of Braintree, Venmo will be included in PayPal’s mobile payment capabilities.
For further details on how Venmo works, check out this video below!
I feel that the move to acquire Braintree was a solid one.This allowed eBay to eliminate a competitor and gain an extra platform for its expansion. Since consumers tend to prioritize the convenience of products and services, smart phone applications would be the ideal market to target. Furthermore, since PayPal is currently one of the dominant online payment platforms, most consumers would be comfortable with its payment systems and be able to adapt to its mobile payment platform with ease. By merging two popular online and mobile payment platforms together, I am confident that eBay’s expansion into the mobile industry would be a huge success.