Braintree launches Ignition, gives away $50K worth of services to devs

Hooray, free stuff for your startup! All you have to do is develop your product on top of Braintree’s payment processing platform.

Today, PayPal-owned mobile payment processing service Braintree announced it would wave the first $50,000 of processing fees for startups building on its platform through its newly minted Ignition program.

To sweeten the pot, it’s making the deal available to any U.S.-based startup instead of limiting it to only a specific number of companies. Also, it’s not requiring startups to sign any contracts or make any commitments.

As it continues to compete with rival Stripe for developers’ favor, Braintree is rolling out this program again (it ran a similar smaller one in 2012) to gain more technology startup clients. As we previously reported, PayPal actually acquired the company largely because it saw it as it chance to clinch more developers and startups as customers. Braintree must continue on its mission to attract as many as possible.

Luckily, Ignition is likely to be very helpful in that regard. As the company points out in its announcement, the 2012 run of this promotion yielded some great successes. Past participants Everpurse, Pixel Academy, and Tastemaker all found tremendous benefit from the waived-fee promotion. And that allowed them to get up and running very quickly, save $50,000 of precious startup launch money, and be able to reinvest those savings into their companies.

Braintree already counts Uber, Airbnb, HotelTonight, and Angry Birds maker Rovio among its customers and hopes Ignition will help launch the next crop of world-class companies.