PayPal is scaling back the spending at Braintree, the online payments service eBay acquired before the split, according to TheNextWeb.com
“Perhaps indicating that it may have been a bit too lavish with its cash, PayPal-owned Braintree is cancelling its global “tech for good” BattleHack for 2016 and binning its related staff too,” the publication wrote. It said PayPal did not confirm how many staff were laid off.
TheNextWeb cited a report which said the entire team of “developer evangelists” had been let go, though PayPal told the publication some of the staff would be moved to other projects.
In 2014, Illinois gave Braintree $12 million in state incentives to reward job creation, according to Crain’s. Braintree had pledged to create 216 new full-time jobs by March 2016 and another 144 by March 2017. “If it meets those targets, eBay will receive $12 million in Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) tax credits paid over 10 years by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity,” the publication reported.
eBay had acquired Braintree for $800 million in cash in 2013, giving it additional mobile capabilities. Marketplace clients at the time of acquisition included Airbnb, OpenTable, TaskRabbit, and Uber. It also owned the mobile app Venmo that gives people an easy way to pay each other using their mobile devices and leveraging social networks.
Update: A PayPal spokesperson told us today, “As you’ll notice in the below official statement, we are not laying off all our developer evangelists as you state in the article.”
She provided the following statement:
“Developer advocacy has become an integral part of the PayPal and Braintree businesses, and is at the core of everything that we do. As such, having a separate team focused on developer advocacy is no longer necessary. The team most recently known as Braintree_Dev will no longer operate under that moniker, and some members of the team will be integrated into developer-facing roles throughout Braintree. Additionally, as we build the next generation of developer-facing programs, we will not be bringing BattleHack back in 2016, but are constantly working on new programs and initiatives.”
