Braintree Payments Review

As we’ve mentioned above, Braintree provides a true, full-service merchant account, complete with a unique merchant ID number for your business. This feature offers greater account stability than you see with a payment service provider (PSP), such as Stripe or Square. Braintree doesn’t have a minimum processing requirement for merchants, so even low-volume businesses can use its services. The company does, however, have an Acceptable Use Policy that makes it unusable by most high-risk merchants.

Fees & Rates

Pricing Overview

For most merchants, Braintree’s rates and fees are incredibly simple:

For businesses processing over $80,000 per month, there is also the option to negotiate a custom pricing plan. While high-volume merchants can choose between either a flat-rate or interchange-plus pricing plan for your Braintree processing fees, the interchange-plus option will almost always be more affordable overall.

That’s it. There are (for the most part) no surcharges or additional fees, including monthly, setup, or early termination fees. There are a few circumstantial fees you might run into, though.

Extra Costs

Extra fees apply in certain circumstances, including for international transactions or when you accept payment from cards issued outside of the US.

You’ll also pay transaction fees for alternative payment types such as ACH and Venmo.

As we’ve mentioned, Braintree’s payment gateway is also available independent of its processing services at a cost. The gateway is compatible with most US merchant accounts, and you can even connect multiple accounts.

Supported Payment Types & Currency

As a global payment processing service, Braintree’s supported payment methods vary by region. Braintree also supports settlement in over 130 currencies.

Available payment methods vary by market:

Broadly Supported Payment Methods

• Cards
  • Visa
  • Mastercard
  • Discover
  • JCB
  • Diners Club
  • UnionPay
• Alternative Payment Methods
  • PayPal
  • Apple Pay
  • Google Pay
  • Samsung Pay

Locally Supported Payment Methods

• ACH
• Venmo
• Bancontact
• BLIK
• iDeal
• eps
• GiroPay
• MyBank
• P24
• Sofort
• Trustly

Sales & Advertising Transparency

With such a simple pricing structure, Braintree has an easy job when it comes to transparency. It discloses all rates, fees, and important contractual stipulations in plain sight, with absolutely no surprises.

The more difficult task here is properly explaining all of Braintree’s many features and customization options. Fortunately, it has some great resources: developer docs, support articles (which serve as your knowledgebase), and FAQs. You’ll also find an active blog with some good information for merchants. Want more details? Braintree also has a resource center to help businesses stay up to date on trends in the payments industry.

All salespeople are in-house, and they have a thorough knowledge of Braintree’s products.

Contract Length & Early Termination Fee

You’ll have absolutely no merchant account early termination fee with Braintree. You can see the standard Braintree Merchant Agreement on the company’s website if you’re interested. It’s pretty standard fare as far as merchant agreements go and nothing that should worry you. As we’ve already said, there are no extra costs or hidden fees, so you don’t have to worry about early termination fees or monthly minimums. Please make sure you check the list of acceptable business types before you sign up, too!

Another plus: If you choose to leave Braintree, you get to take all of your customer data with you. That’s a really good deal. You’ll just want to make sure the new system is PCI-compliant.

Customer Service & Technical Support

Braintree makes its customer service and technical support readily available. Although there is no live chat option, you get email and phone support at no charge and with no limits. In fact, Braintree likes to bill itself as offering “white-glove support.” We’ll explore whether Braintree lives up to that claim in the Braintree Payments Reviews, Complaints, & Problems section below.

If it’s an emergency, you can get service 24/7/365 via email from on-call reps and engineers, and that’s pretty awesome. We’ve already mentioned the website resources that you’ll have access to as well in the Sales & Advertising Transparency section. In all, I find them to be quite comprehensive and easy to navigate, which is always nice.

It’s worth noting that Braintree’s social media and blog presence haven’t been maintained to the degree they used to be. Whether this is due to Braintree becoming increasingly integrated into PayPal or something else isn’t yet clear.

Braintree Payments Reviews, Complaints, & Problems

Negative Braintree Reviews & Complaints

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) now rolls Braintree into its PayPal profile. PayPal currently has a B+ rating. As Braintree is no longer disambiguated from PayPal, that makes it difficult to zero in on Braintree-specific issues. Needless to say, PayPal has over 28,000 complaints closed in the last three years and a customer review score of 1.15 out of 5 stars.

Some issues that come up in Braintree Payments reviews:

• Long Setup Times For Accounts: This isn’t surprising, given that you get an actual merchant account and not just an aggregated account as you do with PayPal (Braintree’s parent company). You won’t get instant access, and you’ll have to provide several documents before you’re approved. This is one of the more common and consistent complaints. Another complaint I have seen echoed is that Braintree requires merchants to submit so much documentation that at times it feels “intrusive.”
• Withheld Funds & Sudden Account Closures: Among the serious complaints, these two issues show up most often. In theory, a proper merchant account means that holds and account closures are less likely than with aggregated accounts. Judging by the overall low complaint numbers, I think that’s true of Braintree. However, I have seen numerous complaints that state that Braintree allowed the merchant to process payments before the account was “fully approved.” Then, after the merchant had been processing payments for a while, Braintree conducted a full review of the account and determined that it could not support that business. In some cases, merchants who shipped products during this period lost the payments (and products) from those transactions, in addition to having their accounts closed. The Braintree representative I spoke with says that this occasionally happens with merchants in the EU and that Braintree always provides a disclaimer that merchants should wait to ship orders until their account has been fully approved.
• No Support For High-Risk Merchants: We always recommend that you read the Acceptable Use Policy for every merchant account you apply for. This will significantly reduce the risk of you signing on to a service that boots you out after a short amount of time (like what we described above). Braintree does not accept high-risk businesses, and your idea of high-risk might not line up with the company’s definition. We highly recommend that you diligently read Braintree’s Acceptable Use Policy, including the list of prohibited businesses. If you’re on the list or in any sort of high-risk field, you’re better off pursuing a merchant account with a processor that specializes in working with those kinds of businesses, including Durango Merchant Services or PaymentCloud.
• Insufficient Fraud Protection: We always see complaints regarding chargebacks and fraudulent transactions, and Braintree is no exception. Merchants state that Braintree’s fraud protection services aren’t enough to protect their businesses. Some even complain that the number of fraudulent transactions they process increased after switching to Braintree.

Positive Braintree Reviews & Testimonials

Braintree’s client list speaks for itself: Uber, GitHub, and Dropbox, just to name a few. But if you really want something remarkable…

Braintree actually bothers to put in the effort to create case studies and shows how its solutions can be used to tackle different problems. Not many companies invest in doing this, but it’s always nice to see. You’ll see the case studies come from smaller-name businesses, too, and not just the giants of the industry.

That’s not the only source of good reviews. There are positive Braintree reviews from actual users on other sites around the web mixed in with the negative reviews. As I dug through them, I found that people like the following:

• How easy it is to integrate Braintree
• Consistent pricing with no monthly fees
• Easy to use and integrate
• Lots of payment methods available

Developers, in particular, note that the API is solid. They also like the extensive support for various programming languages.

Final Verdict: Is A Braintree Merchant Account The Best Choice For eCommerce?

Braintree remains a pretty good choice for online businesses, particularly those who want the simplicity of all-inclusive flat-rate pricing with no month-to-month contracts. However, the recent change in pricing does reduce Braintree’s value proposition for merchants doing less than $60 per transaction. Bigger ticket merchants may actually wind up saving some money, but many of them will probably be better off with interchange-plus pricing anyway. Additionally, I have some concerns about Braintree’s reduced public presence that may indicate the brand is being wound down and dissolved into the great PayPal blob.

Still, most of what previously made Braintree one of our favorite processors is still here: excellent developer support, access to the PayPal ecosystem, and strong international support. You’ll just need to do some napkin math beforehand.