eBay to buy payment processor Braintree for $800 million

US online retailer eBay Inc is buying Chicago-based payment processing company Braintree Payment Solutions, for $800 million in cash, in order to boost its PayPal unit's mobile commerce business.

"Braintree is a perfect fit with PayPal," said John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay. "Bill Ready and his team add complementary talent and technology that we believe will help accelerate PayPal's global leadership in mobile payments."

Founded in 2007 by Bryan Johnson, Braintree is backed by venture capital firms Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Greycroft, RRE Ventures and others.

It provides credit card payment processing solutions for businesses internationally. It offers an online merchant account, credit card data storage, managed recurring billing, and payment gateway to accept credit card payments.

The company's solutions are used to process one-off transactions, recurring billing transactions, verifications, and refunds. In addition, it offers integration and plugin solutions for online shopping carts.

Merchants in more than 40 countries across North America, Europe and Australia accept payments in more than 130 currencies using Braintree. Its service is used by a number of startups and tech companies, including Airbnb, Fab, LivingSocial, Uber, Twilio, GitHub and others.

Braintree enables purchasing for more than 40 million consumers and expects to process approximately $12 billion in payment volume in 2013.

Braintree also operates Venmo, a mobile payments solution company that it acquired last year for $26.2 million and which is of great interest to PayPal.

After its acquisition, Braintree will continue to operate as a separate service within PayPal under the continued leadership of Braintree CEO Bill Ready, who will report to PayPal president David Marcus.