Braintree is not only
Von Behren joins Braintree as the lead engineer for its San Francisco office. In this role, he will work to further Braintree's mobile commerce initiatives, including its
"Ultimately the thing that really pulled me over was the combination of a really great team here … plus the chance to go back to the e-commerce side, which has a chance of moving a whole lot faster," he says.
A veteran in mobile payments, von Behren also co-founded Google Wallet. While at Google, von Behren worked with Aunkur Arya, now general manager of mobile at Braintree, and Mike Dudas, Braintree's newly hired senior director of mobile business development.
Google was an interesting place to work in terms of its unique position in the market with its huge advertising network, says von Behren. At Square, it was fun working with smaller merchants, he says.
Von Behren says he's moving to Braintree to continue easing the friction of paying with a mobile device, his first motivator to work in the payments space.
"It's so awkward actually consummating that purchase [with a mobile device] … but there's a lot of intent there," he says. "I really get a chance to go back to some of the stuff that brought me to the space in the first place."
In the past year, Braintree has nearly tripled its number of employees. Airbnb, Uber and LivingSocial all run on Braintree's platform, which enables merchants to accept many different payment methods. The five-year-old company handles more than $8 billion in payment volume annually.
"There's more flexibility in the e-commerce space," von Behren says. "For an engineer, there's a lot of really fun stuff you can do in that sphere."
