Dallas, Texas 09/27/2013 (Financialstrend) – eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) is all set to buy Braintree Inc, the credit card software company for $800 million in cash. It is going to be the biggest acquirement of a Chicago-based software company after IBM purchased SPSS Inc for $1.2billion in the year 2009. It is certainly a big win for Braintree to be bought by the PayPal parent, eBay.
After the acquisition, the company will still operate in Chicago with employee strength of 150 and will be led by the Chief Executive Officer, Bill Ready who will directly report to Mr. David Marcus, PayPal president in California. According to Mr. Ready, Braintree also has its branch offices in New York and San Francisco and the employment will grow equally in all the three areas. In venture funding, Braintree raised a total of $70 million and was not ready for acquisition when it was approached by different tech companies in the past weeks but the company readily agreed when approached by eBay, the pioneer of Silicon Valley online auction.
All across the world, PayPal operates in more than 140 countries and will definitely help Braintree to expand internationally. Bryan Johnson, Braintree founder and Chuck Templeton, veteran tech entrepreneur are the chief investors of Braintree and the deal with eBay is definitely a big payday for them and it will also fascinate other entrepreneurs to invest money in the company that can be used to start new business. This deal will also boost a new confidence in New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners, which invested in Groupon Inc.
This acquisition by eBay is another indication that Chicago is definitely an industry leader and online payment is still the hottest sectors in tech world.
James Wester, an analyst at International Data Corp, said it is definitely a good move by eBay to eliminate Braintree who was doing well by undermining PayPal.
