PayPal & Braintree

Also called Braintree, PayPal Zettle, Venmo, PayPal Checkout, PYPL

The consumer wallet everyone has, plus Braintree, its developer-facing processor. Strong card-present rates, notorious account holds.

What it is

PayPal is a consumer wallet, a merchant processor and, through Braintree, a full payment gateway and processing platform. Its US published merchant pricing is unusually complete: standard card payments at 2.99% + $0.49, PayPal/Venmo checkout at 3.49% + $0.49, in-person card-present or QR at 2.29% + $0.09, keyed at 3.49% + $0.09, a higher rate for virtual terminal, and invoicing at 2.99% + $0.49 for cards. Hardware is $29 for a first card reader and $199 for a terminal. The company states no monthly fees, no chargeback fees and no contract. Braintree, PayPal's developer platform, publishes its own card and Venmo rates, ACH at 0.75% capped at $5, and a $15 chargeback fee, with interchange-plus available at scale. That 2.29% + $0.09 card-present rate is genuinely competitive — better than Square's published in-person rate and better than most flat-rate alternatives. What PayPal is not is a restaurant POS: there's no table management, no kitchen display, no coursing, no floor plan, no labor management. Its US homepage is almost entirely consumer-facing, with business a nav toggle away.

Why it matters to your business

PayPal's card-present rate of 2.29% + $0.09 is a legitimately good number for a small retailer or service business, and the $29 reader means near-zero capital risk. If you're a low-volume in-person seller, it's worth a look and most people never consider it because they think of PayPal as an online thing. Online is the opposite story. That $0.49 fixed fee is the highest among majors and it destroys low-ticket economics. And if you hold meaningful balances in PayPal, move them to your bank on a schedule — the hold risk is real and the mitigation is simply not leaving money there.

Where it gets contested

PayPal's defining merchant complaint is account freezes and reserve holds, and it has been for two decades. As a payment facilitator onboarding merchants instantly at enormous scale, PayPal manages risk after the fact, and the experience of a legitimate business with frozen funds and email-only support is the single most cited grievance in the category. PayPal's position — that it's underwriting millions of merchants it never met and fraud in that population is real — is true and doesn't help the merchant whose payroll is stuck. The second issue is the fixed fee. At $0.49 on standard checkout, PayPal has the highest per-transaction fixed cost among major processors. On a $4.50 coffee that's nearly 11% before the percentage rate. PayPal's card-present rate is excellent and its online fixed fee is punishing, and merchants frequently don't distinguish. Third, partner opacity: no PayPal partner program is discoverable at public URLs — enterprise partner and business partner-program pages return 404 and partner.paypal.com fails to resolve. Whatever channel exists is private. Credit where due: PayPal publishes complete pricing, charges no chargeback fee on its own platform (unusual and genuinely merchant-friendly), and its consumer brand converts. For an online seller, offering PayPal measurably lifts conversion.

How to check it yourself

If you take PayPal online, multiply your transaction count by $0.49 and compare it to your total PayPal fees. If the fixed fee is a large share, your average ticket is too small for that pricing. And set a standing weekly transfer of your PayPal balance to your bank account — reduce the exposure rather than arguing about it later.

Receipts

Claims above that are checkable, with where to check them. Published so you do not have to take anyone's word for it.

PayPal's published US merchant pricing: Checkout 2.99% + $0.49, in-person card present/QR 2.29% + $0.09, keyed 3.49% + $0.09, a higher virtual terminal rate, with no monthly fees, no chargeback fees and no contract; reader $29, terminal $199
paypal.com ↗
Braintree's published fees: its own card and Venmo rates, ACH 0.75% capped at $5, $15 chargeback fee
paypalobjects.com ↗
No PayPal partner program is discoverable at public URLs; enterprise and business partner-program pages return 404 and partner.paypal.com fails DNS resolution
paypal.com ↗