PayPal's Braintree is cutting staff and axing a developer outreach programme
Braintree, which is owned by PayPal, announced on Twitter that it is shuttering its @braintree_dev account and cancelling "BattleHack," an annual hacking competition that last year took place around the world and ended with a 24-hour final in Silicon Valley.
As a result, Braintree is also axing some staff associated with the project, in particular "developer advocates." The Next Web first reported the cutbacks.
Braintree wouldn't confirm numbers to Business Insider and said some in the team would be relocated to other roles. Braintree said in an emailed 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 programmes, we will not be bringing BattleHack back in 2016, but are constantly working on new programmes and initiatives.
Braintree provides tools to help developers easily accept payments online, a key part of building any online shop. The company's biggest rival is Stripe, which offers a similar service.
The idea of initiatives like BattleHack and @braintree_dev was to build awareness of the brand and its services among computer programmers so that if they are hired to build an online shop or decide to set one up themselves they'll choose to use Braintree.
Braintree has been running high-profile outdoor advertising campaigns in major cities around the world over the last few months and its advertising has been prominent in the London area of Shoreditch, home to lots of startup businesses.