Braintree
PayPal’s developer-facing gateway — hosted fields, a GraphQL API, a card vault, and PayPal acceptance in the same integration.
- Provided by
- PayPal
- Category
- Acquirer-tied
Tied in the standard Australian full-stack model. Whether gateway-only arrangements are available here is worth confirming rather than assuming.
- Status
- Current
- Integrations
- Hosted Fields, APIs and SDKs, GraphQL API
- Features
- Vault and tokenisation, Recurring payments, Fraud tools
- Payment methods
- PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay
- Also acquires
- Yes — PayPal is an acquirer too
Braintree is the half of PayPal that a developer chooses. Hosted Fields keeps the card inputs off the merchant’s servers while leaving the checkout looking like the merchant’s own, and the vault holds tokenised cards for repeat and subscription billing.
The GraphQL API is unusual in this market — most gateways here are REST or, in the bank cases, SOAP. For a team that wants to fetch exactly what it needs in one request, it is a real difference rather than a marketing one.
The commercial side is the catch. In the standard Australian model Braintree is full-stack: PayPal processes, and the gateway and the acquiring come together. PayPal acceptance arriving in the same integration is the compensating advantage, and for a merchant who wants PayPal anyway it removes a second build.
Developer resources
PayPal's own documentation, for whoever has to build against Braintree.
What it costs
PayPal does not publish gateway fees for Braintree. The merchant service fee is negotiated on your volume and card mix. Find out what yours should be.
Other PayPal gateways
On Braintree?
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