Stripe is about as good as Braintree in my experience (at least in terms of online payments processing and powering a shopping cart), and has fantastic customer service. But if Braintree is working, why switch now? Stripe is really easy to integrate if you have to later.

Braintree kills its competitors in P2P payments though. Venmo has been a huge improvement in my life.

Why wait until things get bad? That's like being in an area where there's a real tsunami warning and saying "hey, it's calm now ... I'll just wait until the waves get here before I leave!" The waves will come and you'll be caught off guard.

If PayPal buys Braintree it's likely the PayPal culture will rub off and they'll stop being the great company they are now. This is the reason I'd dig my well before I'm thirsty and switch to a company that doesn't appear headed for a beheading by PayPal.

That's not a good analogy. Switching from PayPal to Stripe is currently very easy (I did it a few weeks ago). Nothing like fleeing an area with a tsunami warning. When switching costs are that low, why not stick with something that is working?

Because what happens when your Braintree account gets arbitrarily frozen under PayPal's risk management policies? It might be working today, but that doesn't mean the rug won't be pulled from out underneath you, and at that stage there will be real consequences for your business, i.e. frozen funds and drama. Then you've got to do the whole migration while putting out a fire.

If you wouldn't want to do business with PayPal, you probably wouldn't want to do business with Braintree if it's owned by PayPal. A different brand doesn't mean that they're not being operated by the same masters.