PayPal Links Internal Developer Team to Braintree

PayPal's adjustments to its developer program will provide an early look at how the company's Braintree acquisition will change PayPal's approach to new payments technology.

PayPal's developer relations team has joined Braintree, a payments software company PayPal and its parent eBay purchased last year for $800 million.

Braintree has already provided its technology to a number of prominent e-commerce startups such as Uber, Fab and Aribnb. It specializes in enabling new companies to customize their own commerce and payments platforms through the use of software development kits (SDKs).

"Our team will continue sharing information and best practices for PayPal APIs [application programming interfaces], but now we'll be able to do the same for Braintree SDKs," writes John Lunn, head of PayPal developer relations, in a blog post. "By having the knowledge of both sets of tools, we will be able to better help developers find the best payment solution for their needs."

PayPal has been expanding its outreach to external developers, extending its tools to developers outside the U.S. and operating a series of competitive events called "hackathons" to attract the attention of technology developers. PayPal also launched a Startup Blueprint Program, which waives payment processing fees for developers who are eligible to participate.

PayPal's work with smaller developers pre-dates its interest in Braintree. However, Braintree quickly became a force PayPal could not ignore.

"When we finally looked at it side by side, we decided we were better off taking Braintree's [technology] and merging ours into it," eBay President and CEO John Donahoe said in a conference call in October.