EBay buys payments platform

EBAY, owner of payments service PayPal, said yesterday it would bolster that business by buying Braintree for $800m in cash, to expand its mobile transactions business.

Braintree, a global payments platform, works with online and mobile-only start-ups such as room-rental service Airbnb and OpenTable, a real-time, internet-based restaurant-reservations offering, eBay said. Chicago-based Brain- tree will become a unit of Paypal.

eBay, which acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.18bn, expects the unit to process $20bn in mobile payments this year. The firm said PayPal contributed 40% to total revenue last year. “Braintree is a perfect fit with PayPal,” eBay CEO John Donahoe said. The acquisition would add “complementary talent and technology that … will help accelerate PayPal’s global leadership in mobile payments”.

eBay was little changed at $54.10 before midday in New York yesterday.