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PayPal's parent company, eBay, plans to acquire payments startup Braintree for approximately US$800 million in cash to enhance PayPal's mobile capabilities.
Braintree offers a platform designed to make it easier for companies to accept payments in apps or on websites. Experienced developers should be able to integrate the platform in less than half an hour, allowing companies to start accepting payments quickly, according to the company.
EBay said that it hopes that PayPal and Braintree will be able to better support developers together. Once the acquisition is completed, Braintree will continue to operate as a separate service within PayPal, it said.
The Braintree service is used by companies like Web-based accommodation service AirBNB and taxi-hailing service Uber. It is used by merchants in more than 40 countries across North America, Europe and Australia. The merchants can accept payments in more than 130 currencies.
"By joining with PayPal, we'll be able to expand more quickly around the world. We'll have more tools to offer to our customers through our developer platform. The universe of consumers that we can reach with our services that make it easy for people to pay on a mobile device will expand significantly," Braintree's CEO William Ready said in a blog post.
Braintree's mobile application Venmo is part of the acquisition and will help to contribute to PayPal's mobile payments capabilities, eBay said in the release. PayPal's mobile payment volume is projected to be more than $20 billion this year, it added.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close late in the fourth quarter of 2013.
Loek is Amsterdam Correspondent and covers online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com