Google Wallet co-founder heads to Braintree

SAN FRANCISCO — Braintree, a payments platform for online and mobile commerce, has appointed Google Wallet co-found Rob von Behren as the company’s lead engineer for its San Francisco office.

In his new role, von Behren will be charged with helping to advance Braintree's position in mobile commerce, including its one-touch mobile payment solution Venmo.

Von Behren entered the payments world four years ago when he and co-founder Jon Wall conceived, founded and successfully launched Google's groundbreaking Google Wallet mobile payment system. A long-time systems engineer, von Behren has experience in distributed computation, high-performance computing and concurrent algorithms. He holds bachelor's degrees in mathematics and philosophy from the University of Washington and studied for his doctorate in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Rob is among a handful of the very best engineers in mobile and he will help us to continue leading the way in mobile commerce innovation," said Bill Ready, CEO, Braintree. "The best online and mobile commerce experiences run on Braintree because we have exceptional engineers like Rob building the payments tools they'd want to use for their own applications."

Companies that run on Braintree’s payment platform include Fab, Airbnb, Uber, LivingSocial, AngryBirds, HotelTonight and more than 4,000 e-commerce and mobile companies. Braintree handles more than $8 billion in annual payment volume, including more than $2 billion in mobile commerce transactions. The company is powering single-click purchasing for more than 40 million consumers and now allows for one-touch purchasing across apps on a mobile device with its Venmo Touch product.

"Joining Braintree gives me the opportunity to solve real problems companies and people face when transacting online and on mobile devices," said von Behren. "Braintree's approach to mobile is spot-on with the vision I have imagined for the future of payments. It's exciting to be part of realizing the potential."

Braintree has nearly tripled the company's headcount in the last year and has attracted talent from Google, Square, Yahoo and Groupon. Twitter's SVP of engineering Chris Fry joined Braintree's board of directors in March. The company expects to continue hiring engineers and entrepreneurs across its offices in San Francisco, New York and Chicago.