Braintree reviews
Braintree is PayPal-owned, and the reviews keep returning to what that means in practice. Developers rate the API and the fact that cards, PayPal and Venmo arrive through one integration. Then they describe trying to reach support and being routed to PayPal, where nobody handles Braintree merchant processing. Waits of weeks, and in one case seven months, are on the record.
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29 Google reviews
Busy in 2014 to 2016, quiet since. Nothing current from merchants.
What people say about Braintree elsewhere
Summaries of the public reviews and discussion on other platforms, written by our editors and dated. None of it is counted in the rating this site publishes.
Google reviews
Braintree on Google
Listed on Google as Braintree Payments, 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago
- 5 star
- 11
- 4 star
- 0
- 3 star
- 0
- 2 star
- 1
- 1 star
- 17
A small listing at the Chicago office: 29 reviews, 2.6 average, 17 of them one star. Small enough that it is a set of anecdotes rather than a rating, and worth reading only for what the anecdotes have in common. The five-star reviews are old, from 2017 to 2020, and praise the SDKs, the support team and the risk handling. The one-star reviews are about not being able to reach anyone: a migration to another provider that took the best part of a year for lack of a reply, a 1099-K issued to an individual instead of the company, a merchant told during a sales conversation that a category was fine and then declined. The absence of a phone number is the thread running through them, which is the same complaint people made about Stripe on Reddit a decade ago and chose Braintree to escape.
What reviewers praise
- The SDKs and the risk teamWhat the older five-star reviews credit: developer tooling and risk management, from merchants describing fast growth.
What reviewers flag
- No route to a humanThe dominant recent complaint. One merchant describes nearly a year trying to complete a migration off Braintree for want of a reply, with PayPal declining to help.
- Twenty-nine reviews is not a ratingHalf of these are years old. Read them as individual accounts and weigh the Reddit record and the review platforms alongside.
In their words
Great support team. Awesome risk management. Good for a fast growing business.
Read it in full
No phone contacts and PayPal will not assist in anyways.
Read it in full
What Reddit says about Braintree
r/smallbusiness, r/startups, r/Bitcoin · Busy in 2014 to 2016, quiet since. Nothing current from merchants.
The Braintree discussion on Reddit essentially stopped. Its peak was 2014 and 2015, when Braintree was the eBay payments unit adding bitcoin support and the r/Bitcoin posts pulled hundreds of points, and 2015 to 2016, when founders genuinely agonised over Braintree against Stripe. Those old comparison threads are still the most useful thing there, and they are useful for one reason: the deciding factor for people who chose Braintree was that it answered a telephone and Stripe did not. That is worth knowing because the Google reviews now say the opposite. Nothing substantial has been posted about using Braintree in years, which for a product this old is itself an answer: developers building new integrations are discussing Stripe, Adyen and Checkout.com instead.
What keeps getting raised
- Chosen because it answered the phoneThe specific reason people gave for picking Braintree over Stripe in 2016, which the current Google reviews contradict.
- The conversation moved onNo substantial merchant thread in years. New integrations get discussed in terms of Stripe, Adyen and Checkout.com.
- Rates are ratesThe most durable advice in those threads: below serious volume nobody beats a blended 2.9 percent, so pick on support and tooling.
Threads worth reading
- Braintree vs Stripe vs Paymill vs Amazon payments
r/startups · 8 September 2015 · 51 upvotes · 39 comments
The comparison thread of its era, and a snapshot of when Braintree was a genuine alternative rather than a PayPal product.
- Braintree vs. Stripe
r/smallbusiness · 13 April 2016 · 39 upvotes · 56 comments
Where the phone-support argument is made most plainly, alongside a useful explanation of why a blended 2.9 percent is hard to beat below serious volume.
- eBay Payments Unit Braintree to Let Merchants Accept Bitcoin
r/Bitcoin · 8 September 2014 · 467 upvotes · 44 comments
The high-water mark of Braintree's attention on Reddit, and a reminder of how long ago that was.
Comments worth quoting
Fuck stripe for not having a phone. For that reason alone, I'd never ever use it. Switched to braintree and couldn't be happier.
Read it in full
Unless you have tremendous volume, you are simply not going to get better than a blended 2.9%.
Read it in full
Braintree reviews
Reviews submitted directly to this site by merchants who use Braintree, moderated before they appear. Separate from the Google and Reddit summaries above.
No merchant has reviewed Braintree here yet
Reviews are written by merchants who use the processor and are moderated before they appear.
Write the first reviewWhat the third-party review record shows
Braintree sits inside the PayPal group, and its review record splits along that seam. On G2 and among independent reviewers the product is well regarded: an API-first gateway with strong documentation, native support for cards, PayPal and Venmo through one integration, and the vault and subscription tooling a developer building custom checkout wants. Merchant Maverick and Payment Review both rate the technology favourably.
The criticism is almost entirely about support, and it is unusually blunt. Braintree provides email and ticket support only, and multiple reviewers report waiting days or weeks for a response to an urgent payment problem. What makes it worse than a slow queue is the routing: reviewers describe calling and reaching PayPal, whose staff do not handle Braintree merchant processing, so there is no phone path to a person who can act on the account.
The second theme is the one that recurs across every aggregator in this directory. Merchants report accounts frozen or restricted without warning, with funds held for weeks. Braintree is underwritten through PayPal, so the risk posture reviewers describe is recognisably PayPal's.
Themes across public reviews
Pros
- Cards, PayPal and Venmo through a single integration, which no independent gateway can offer
- Venmo access in the United States reaches a younger customer base most processors cannot serve
- The API and documentation are rated well by developers building custom checkout and subscription flows
- The card vault and recurring billing tooling are included rather than sold as separate products
- Marketplace and split-payment support is mature, which is why platforms choose it
- Backed by PayPal's scale, so the underlying processing infrastructure is not in question
Cons
- Support is email and ticket only, and reviewers report days or weeks of waiting on urgent payment issues
- Calling reaches PayPal, whose staff do not handle Braintree merchant processing, so there is no phone escalation
- One reviewer describes waiting over seven months on a single straightforward case
- Accounts frozen or restricted without warning, with funds held for weeks, which is PayPal's risk posture
- It expects developers, so there is no realistic path to launch without engineering resource
- Reviewers describe tech support as slower and less responsive than the general queue, which is the wrong way round
What the review record will not tell you
The support complaints are not really about response times, and reading them that way understates the problem. A slow queue is an inconvenience. A support structure where the phone number belongs to a different company that does not handle your product is a design decision, and it means the severity of your problem has no bearing on how fast it gets solved. Weigh that against how urgent payment failures are in your business rather than against how bad other companies' support is.
What the reviews cannot tell you is whether the Venmo and PayPal integration is worth it for your customers specifically, and that is the only real reason to be here. Look at your own checkout data or run a test: if a meaningful share of buyers reach for PayPal when offered, Braintree consolidates that into one integration and the trade may be worth making. If they do not, you are accepting the weakest support record in this directory for a feature you will not use, and a standalone gateway plus a PayPal button gets you closer to the same place with a provider you can reach.
What reviewers say in their own words
Excerpts below are quoted from reviews published on third-party platforms, with a link to each source. They are not reviews submitted to this site, and they do not count toward the Braintree rating shown above. All four are one-star reviews, from G2, Trustpilot and PissedConsumer, and they are all about the same thing. That concentration is the finding: nobody in the negative pool is complaining about the technology.
- "Beware - the worst nonexistent customer service in the history of credit card processors. Just try getting a live customer service person on the phone. Every call goes to paypal and they have no Braintree merchant processing customer service reps."
1 out of 5, PissedConsumer, 2026 - "We were waiting over 7 months and sent multiple emails with requests to handle a straightforward case. Now we have another one related to adding a merchant account, 3 weeks passed, we sent multiple emails in the meantime, still ZERO answers."
1 out of 5, G2, 2026 - "Nothing - terrible company with ZERO customer service. Simply put, if you have a problem, there is no one to talk to."
1 out of 5, G2, 2026 - "Customer support is terrible, tech support is even more unresponsive and slower."
1 out of 5, Trustpilot, 2026
Frequently asked questions
- Are these Braintree reviews verified?
- The assessments here come from G2, Trustpilot, PissedConsumer and independent merchant-services reviewers including Merchant Maverick and Payment Review, current as of August 2026. G2 verifies reviewers before publishing; Trustpilot and PissedConsumer do not. None of these are reviews submitted to this site. Anything in the list above is a review a merchant wrote here and our moderators approved, rated on pricing, support, ease of use, features and reliability, and our own score is computed from those only.
- What do Braintree reviewers complain about most?
- Support, by a very wide margin, and the specific complaint is structural rather than a matter of slow replies. Braintree offers email and ticket support only, and reviewers report that calling gets them PayPal, where staff do not handle Braintree merchant processing. So there is no phone route to anyone who can act. Reviewers describe waiting days or weeks on urgent payment problems, and one describes seven months on a single case. Second, and familiar from the rest of this directory, accounts frozen or restricted without warning with funds held for weeks.
- Why would you choose Braintree over Stripe?
- One reason, and it is a good one if it applies to you: PayPal and Venmo are native rather than bolted on, so a single integration covers cards, PayPal and Venmo without a second contract or a second checkout flow. In the United States, Venmo access reaches a customer base most processors cannot offer. If a meaningful share of your buyers prefer paying that way, that is worth real money in conversion. If they do not, you are taking on PayPal's support structure for a benefit you will not use, and <a href="/processor/stripe">Stripe</a> has the better documentation and the larger developer community.
- Is Braintree suitable for a business without developers?
- No, and it does not pretend otherwise. Braintree is API-first and expects engineering resource, which is why reviewers who like it are technical teams building custom checkout, subscriptions or marketplace flows. A small business wanting a hosted checkout and a phone number to call is the worst possible fit here, because it needs exactly the two things this review record says are weakest: hand-holding and reachable support. Read the support complaints as disqualifying if that describes you rather than as something you will work around.
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