Braintree Raises $34MM Series A From Accel Partners

CHICAGO, June 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- $34 million is a lot of money for a Series A investment and Accel Partners is a big name. We're grateful that we get to mention both in our announcement today.

Braintree has been powering payments for online and mobile commerce companies since 2007. We help businesses accept payments by providing a merchant account, payment gateway, recurring billing, credit card storage and PCI Compliance solutions.

Today, we're on a $3 billion run rate in transaction volume as we work with leading web, mobile, and infrastructure software companies. As one blogger recently put it, our customer list "reads like the front page of TechCrunch" and includes companies that are:

• transforming commerce: LivingSocial, Airbnb, Shopify
• providing innovative consumer utilities: Picnik, Animoto, OpenTable
• energizing the mobile space: GoMobo, Lookout, HotelTonight
• bringing tech infrastructure to businesses: 37Signals, GitHub, Brightcove

Braintree begins

I founded Braintree in 2007 with the objective of filling the gap between what customers were asking for and what the payment industry was providing. Before Braintree, payment options for web and mobile companies were limited to products that were built in the late '90s when ecommerce came of age. Just like the recent transformation of the mobile sector where value propositions moved from the network providers to the devices and applications that sit on top of those networks, I saw the payments sector being poised for its own "iPhone-moment".

The upcoming payments revolution

We believe that the payments industry is undergoing a transformative change as significant as what occurred with Netflix and Blockbuster. We believe that the industry will consolidate dramatically and payments will be bundled with a larger set of services. Our goal is to be among the leaders that shape this shift.

A new chapter with Accel

After profitably bootstrapping the company for 4 years, we determined that raising money was the right decision for us. We explored a lot of options, but no one impressed us as much as Accel Partners. They're among the most respected investors in the world, having funded global leaders in social, mobile and commerce categories (including Facebook, Dropbox, Atlassian, Etsy, Rovio, AdMob and Groupon). We're excited to have Ryan Sweeney, partner at Accel, joining our board.

On the decision to invest in Braintree, Ryan Sweeney of Accel said: "Braintree caught our attention when we realized the vast majority of our portfolio companies were turning to them for payments. The more we learned about them as a company, the more excited we became. Like Braintree, we believe that a fundamental transformation is underway in payments. Further, we're backing a team that has accomplished a tremendous amount with very few resources - these guys are just getting started and we are thrilled to be partnering with them going forward."

More than anything, this investment will allow us to improve our customers' lives by giving us the resources both to further improve our core products and pursue exciting opportunities in payments. To do these things, we are hiring more extremely capable people. Note, we'll pay you $5,000 for a referred hire.

Some quick Braintree facts

• 99% of our new business comes from word-of-mouth
• We've grown at compounded growth rate in excess of 600% since inception and, off of much larger base, will grow over 150% in 2011
• We're currently on a $3 billion run rate in payment volume from over 2,000 merchants
• We have 32 extremely capable doers (we need more!) and no managers
• We've been self-funded and highly profitable since our founding

What people are saying about us

Over the years, the nice things that our customers say about us both publicly and privately have brought us the greatest amount of satisfaction. Major themes include:

• How refreshing it is to work with approachable, knowledgeable, capable, honest and helpful people
• How much simpler we make it to accept payments by being a one-stop-shop for all the services a business needs to receive payments from anywhere in the world
• How easy integration becomes with our idiomatic client libraries in Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, .NET and node.js
• What a relief it is to have our solutions minimize the scope of PCI Compliance by 90% and dramatically increase credit card data security
• How satisfying it is to be working with a company that is trying to make their own industry a better place with industry changing initiatives that benefit the customers

To all our customers, thank you! To all of you who are processing payments and are not yet customers, we would love to speak with you! We want to improve your lives and work with you as the payments revolution begins.

Sincerely,

Bryan Johnson
Founder & CEO

About Braintree

Braintree helps businesses process credit card payments by providing a merchant account, payment gateway, recurring billing and credit card storage. We're unlike others in the industry: we think and do things differently and are frequently told by our customers that we are the best payments company they've ever worked with. Visit us at braintreepayments.com, on twitter @braintree.

About Accel Partners

Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of excellence and innovation in venture capital and growth equity, and is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, California, London, UK, New Delhi and Bangalore, India as well as in China via the IDG-Accel Partnership.

With over $8 billion under management, Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their categories, including: Actuate, Acopia, AdMob, Agile Software, Alfresco, AMCC, Arrowpoint, BBN, Brightcove, ComScore, Etsy, Facebook, Foundry Networks, Gameforge, GlamMedia, Groupon, Imperva, Infinera, Interwoven, JBoss, Kayak, Macromedia, Maven Networks, metroPCS, NextG Networks, Polycom/PictureTel, Portal Software, QlikTech, Rapt, Real Networks, Redback Networks, Riverbed, UUNet, Veritas, Walmart.com, Webroot, Wily Technology, XenSource and Zimbra. For more information, please visit the Accel Partners web site at accel.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/accel, or on twitter @accel_partners.

SOURCE Braintree