PayPal has proven that it can stand on its own after splitting from online retail giant eBay. “We’re really excited to have Harper and Modest as part of Braintree”. Modest’s capabilities and team knowledge will be integrated within the Braintree platform. This is what’s known as “contextual commerce”. Once Modest launched earlier in the year, Reed, Richard and a slew of other employees at the company were able to join PayPal’s Braintree, an e-commerce management company that is affiliated with businesses like Uber, to process payments as well as embedding “buy” buttons on various websites.
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According to Fortune, that bet on buy buttons that Modest’s business has, which allowed people to buy items straight from apps without leaving to another page on the Web, was one of the things that drew PayPal to purchase the company. It pointed to social media sites and their increasing moves to offer visitors instant shopping experiences as the reason – including Buyable Pins that make it possible for Pinterest users to purchase products pinned from merchants. “If we can build a great product, but can’t push this out to millions, then it’s boring…we found this wonderful cheat code to get to scale”. “They’re great additives to the Braintree platform”, chimed in Braintree general manager Juan Benitez.
Reed said he met Bill Ready, the Braintree CEO who also serves as senior vice president and global head of merchant and next-generation commerce at PayPal, while working on the Obama campaign. “The acquisition of Modest will help us do incredible things in this area, faster than ever before”, Ready wrote.
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Today, PayPal announced that it has bought Modest, a platform for developing mobile e-commerce apps and solutions. (A leading example of conceptual commerce is the Pintrest “Buy” button, which is actually powered by Braintree). Additionally, Reed said that there’s a huge opportunity to help give retailers the necessary tools to grow from being a small, to a medium, to a large-scale business. Braintree has a presence in the Windy City so it made sense that Modest stay put.
