PayPal merges Braintree’s developer relations team with its own in hopes of improving its image

PayPal is merging its developer relations team with Braintree in an apparent attempt to help the payment processing company build better relationships with the developer community. The improved group will be led by PayPal’s head of its Developer Network, John Lunn, but will be under the Braintree name.

Braintree was acquired by eBay Inc last September for $800 million in a move to boost its mobile payments business. It’s known that prior to the deal, Braintree had built itself around developer relations. Now that it’s part of the eBay Inc family, PayPal is hoping to use Braintree’s charm to help it become more appealing to developers, especially as PayPal faces increased competition from Stripe and Square.

PayPal readily admits that in the past, it hasn’t done a great job at wooing developers to its side. Company president David Marcus said recently that this lapse has caused competitors to grab part of its market share. And while he says that he “welcomes competition” which will benefit consumers in the end, that opening isn’t helping them expand its ecosystem.

Okay, we’ll be the first to admit that this news isn’t necessarily that important, but the ramifications could be significant. PayPal is hoping that Braintree teaches its developer relations team the way of the Force — that is, being able to build better relationships with developers. In return, Braintree’s team will receive the necessary knowledge they need to help developers navigate through the slew of services eBay Inc offers.

While it’s too early to say where the developer team will go in the future, it will be interesting to see if Braintree turns out to become the centralized hub to support the needs of third-party developers who want to tie their applications and services into what eBay, Braintree, PayPal, and StubHub have to offer. And with StackMob entering the family, could we be seeing that company be added to the Lunn-led developer relations team too?

Photo credit: ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images