EXCLUSIVE – Braintree has some work to do.

In order for the digital payments system provider to become the comprehensive commerce operating system for merchants that it wants to become, it must first adapt to the changing landscape of the retail industry, in which partnerships, technology, and concepts like contextual commerce are becoming commonplace.

That’s exactly what the PayPal-owned Braintree is doing with its new service Braintree Extend. The payments company announced the service yesterday.

“We’ve noticed that unique commerce experiences have become increasingly dependent on partnerships, but the payments piece continues to be a challenge,” Azita Habibi, head of Business Development in Commerce at Braintree told Bank Innovation in an email. “Solving the complexity of payments as long-time experts in the field coupled with these newly surfaced use cases that our tools can address, led us to create Braintree Extend — an all-in-one solution that addresses all of these needs easily and securely.”

The need for Braintree Extend stemmed from merchants, who want to improve their services and offerings, but don’t want to be bogged down with payment issues.

“Companies are dependent upon payments and that is not changing any time soon. However, payments are complex, constantly evolving and can be demanding from a security and PCI compliance perspective. To manage this well can be quite onerous and while it’s integral to their business, it’s not their core business,” she said.

Braintree Extend will enable infrastructure and solutions in three types of merchant partnerships: transaction services, rewards and loyalty, and contextual commerce.

“We launched Braintree Extend to address a new set of challenges,” Habibi explained. “For example, a discovery platform can act as an aggregator, provide content, and own the checkout experience but they may not want to take on the additional work or liability of post-purchase activities. Or, two merchants may want to partner together to enable a great contextual commerce experience but may not want to handle the payment information directly. This is precisely the reason why we launched Braintree Extend — so that we can help alleviate these pain points and allow merchants to focus on running and driving growth for their business instead.”

In Braintree Extend, the transaction services feature enhances transaction processing on the back end by unifying disparate payment systems and providing specialized fraud protection services. The rewards and loyalty programs service provide the infrastructure required for merchants to provide carry out such programs in conjunction with their partners. and rewards accrued. And the contextual commerce service lets merchants are partnering with other merchants and platforms to help enable users to purchase directly on new channels.

Founded in 2007, Braintree is a platform that powers mobile and online payments for commerce entities through a combination of technology, customer service and support.

Based in Chicago, Braintree was acquired by payments company PayPal in 2013 for $800 million, according to Forbes. The popular social P2P app Venmo, was in fact, a Braintree company when it was acquired by PayPal.