[nickjj]

I'm not sure I like this idea. Braintree is a legit competitor to Stripe. I'm guessing they have some informal agreement to keep transaction fees about the same but if they become 1 company, what's to stop Stripe from raising fees even more?

I'm not a fan of either to be honest, PayPal once told me I was wrong with something related to taxes and a bunch of different reps told me what I was saying and reported was impossible. Their tax division specialists also replied by email with big bold red letters outlining how it's not possible and that I'm wrong multiple times. They were contacted through support cases I opened with other reps on the phone since they aren't directly accessible on phone.

Then I said I was canceling my account with them if this wasn't resolved since it would have resulted in me needing to pay $400 to have my taxes amended. Long story short, after being ghosted for 3 months they replied to me saying I was right and they indeed had the impossible problem, then fixed their tax forms a week before taxes were due.

It's really bad that a random person on the internet discovered a huge issue with one of their partners and their instinct was to require ~10 hours of back and forth phone calls, multiple emails, me giving them the likely problem and solution on day 1 only to be lead on and ignored for months until the very last second.

[benmorris]

Braintree was a legit competitor, last time I checked they won't even onboard you if you don't have an established business grossing over 100k/yr.

[tempest_]

I remember about 10 years ago I switched our billing / subscription code from paypal to braintree. Braintree was better than paypal but that wasnt saying much. Then paypal bought Braintree and started fucking around with it, asking for conference calls because they wanted us off one of their old flows so they could get us on webhooks that preformed worse and were a pain to implement.

Anyway we switched to stripe. Don't love stripe and they take a big cut but I hate paypal.

[jamesfinlayson]

Same thing happened to me - got stuck on some old Braintree flow and ended up on what was essentially a sales call to switch to some other thing.

[selfmodruntime]

Braintree also is and isn't compatible with the legacy PayPal stack, of which there are 3 layers, depending on whom you ask.

[paytonjjones]

> informal agreement to keep transaction fees about the same

This would be like, ridiculously illegal. It's also not practical; if you can steal customers, the incentive to undercut is very strong.

[bdcravens]

Of course, but that's the thing about "informal" agreements: presumably there's no record of it. Price collusion happens way more than most realize. I was at a trade show for my employer when a competitor walked up to our booth and out loud proposed that we should all fix our prices. We didn't of course, but the brazenness of saying something like that out in the open like was what surprised me.

[axus]

I thought that only happened in hilarious corporate training videos

[nearlyepic]

Read the DoJ’s case they recently closed on price fixing in the egg market. Apparently those videos are like that because that’s how it goes down in real life. You would think people would be smarter but maybe we only see the stupid ones that get caught.

[stavros]

The good thing about price collusion is that it's hard to coordinate. If even one competitor defects (and they have every advantage to, as they'll win big), then the cartel falls apart.

[eek2121]

One of the big rules of commerce is that competing on price is generally a no-no for large markets. Usually, the powers that be would rather compete on a perceived value; that is how “informal price collusion” works.

Price/cost is the last thing you compete on unless you have a wholesale advantage, which nobody in this particular industry does (visa/mastercard set core rates)

Source: I’ve worked with higher ups in numerous commerce operations.

Commerce is actually even worse than many realize. Look up pepsi and walmart as a small example.

[PunchyHamster]

That assumes that

* it instantly brings them a ton of consumers * they have capacity to serve those customers

if they don't competitor can just keep higher price (especially if it is just small middleman fee most people might not care that much about)

And even if both of those are true worst possible case is them expanding to handle influx of customers and then competition following in few months, making their investment moot

[paytonjjones]

That's true, but the thing about price fixing is that it basically guarantees these conditions.

The price is artificially high -> there's a ton of demand waiting to be unlocked by the "potential energy" gated behind the unnatural price

Capacity is easy to plan around; get too much and you can just raise the price again.

[Terr_]

I'd like to point out that the the idea rests on an inefficient market, where price/transaction information was kept secret long enough to turn the trust-violation into worthwhile profit.

In contrast, an efficient market with perfect price information means other cartel members would instantly notice and change their prices to punish the defector.

[tough]

sounds like an org prisonner's dilemma

[stavros]

Exactly.

[Rebelgecko]

Is it? I can imagine scenarios where they're better off accepting a duopoly if it allows the profit margin to be 3x higher

[paytonjjones]

Easier with a duopoly for sure (if there's something restricting new entrants to the market, that's a big problem in its own right), but even so, it's a prisoners dilemma.

They are better off cooperating, but if one defects first they can screw the other one, so it relies on trust.

[doctorpangloss]

i just wonder why you think fees are high. seemingly the only thing that keeps fees low elsewhere in the world is regulations.

[SkiFire13]

Stripe's and Braintree's fees are like night and day, at least for us.

[yawniek]

> This would be like, ridiculously illegal. It's also not practical;

Not if you pay a bit of dividends to jared or dtj

[carlosjobim]

> what's to stop Stripe from raising fees even more?

There's a big amount of competitors for card processing. Just because they aren't well known within tech circles doesn't mean they don't exist.

[account42]

There are many card processors but how many of them provide services equivalent to stripe?

[dewey]

Adyen has a big overlap and they are huge (https://docs.adyen.com/api-explorer/).

[carlosjobim]

There are many burger chains, but do any of them serve Big Macs like McDonald's?

No, so that means McDonald's can charge 500 dollars for a burger, or does it?

[novia]

Paypal offshored all of their support staff.

[geden]

They've been abysmal and borderline criminal since the start.

They randomly withheld £20k from a business I was involved with for no stated reason and no direct means to talk to a human about it. It took months to resolve.

And as for their actual website...

[selfmodruntime]

Everyone knows someone who has a story like this. Not a good look for a major PSP.

[peterspath]

Why would you keep any money on PayPal. It’s just a pass-through to your bank account, accepting payments without giving your bank details to strangers on the internet.

[mholm]

Once you start doing frequent business through PayPal, they begin 'holding' some of your money to form a buffer against chargebacks and fraud. This doesn't happen often at the consumer level, but dominates within the small business world.

[Alupis]

This just isn't true.

PayPal isn't a bank. They're a processor. People run afoul when they keep large amounts in their processor account instead of doing free nightly sweeps. They also run into trouble when they do weird things - like new accounts receiving large funds from international sources, etc. PayPal (and all processors) are required to investigate those instances until you have an established relationship with them - and they'll temporarily hold the suspicious funds while that happens. Business accounts have predictable, established patterns.

99% of the horror stories you hear fall into one of these categories, or both: 1) New Account 2) Unusual Account Activity

PayPal processed millions in annual payments for my previous company, without any issues.

[lotsofpulp]

>People run a fowl when they keep large amounts in their processor account instead of doing free nightly sweeps.

Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.

[KronisLV]

> They randomly withheld £20k from a business I was involved with for no stated reason and no direct means to talk to a human about it. It took months to resolve.

If only there was a regulatory framework to turn that into an extremely simple court case, and to also punish attempts of PayPal to ban users who stand up for access to their money.

If they’re a near-monopoly they shouldn’t be allowed to set their own rules.

[account42]

Exactly treating companies with huge market shares more like utilities that can't just refuse to do business with people for arbitrary reasons and have to follow due process would provide a natural pushback against monopoly building - much more effective than antitrust litigation could ever be.

It's always funny when people say these big companies can't provide a good service because that "wouldn't scale" as if their ability to scale is a god given right and not something that should be pushed back on itself.

[gigatexal]

But there are many competitors no? Adyen at least comes to mind.

[dfunckt]

The dystopia that PayPal is we’re cheering and paying trillionaires to bring forward faster. Can’t wait.