Payment platform Braintree is headed down under, announcing that it will provide mobile and online processing services to online merchants in Australia. This is a part of the company's strategy to expand into international markets.

Earlier this year the company made the move into Europe and Canada. With its entry into Australia, Braintree now processes payments for merchants in more than 30 countries and 130 currencies.

"Innovation in e-commerce and m-commerce is happening at a blistering pace and we see it around the world," said Bill Ready, CEO of Braintree. "Braintree is providing companies in more than 30 countries with access to the same payment tools that have enabled the best consumer purchasing experiences in e-commerce.  We couldn't be more excited to see what Australian innovators will build on the Braintree platform."

Braintree has carved out a nice niche for itself by catering to the needs of developers —those sometimes hapless souls tasked with not only creating a good app but also hooking that app up to a payment gateway to collect all that hoped-for revenue.

To make the process easy, and to attract those developers, Braintree has created a number of tools, including APIs and client libraries, that get them up and running on Braintree's payment gateway quickly.

Braintree has succeeded in becoming the platform for a number of hot startups, including Uber, GitHub, LivingSocial, Airbnb and Rovio (the company behind Angry Birds).

According to Braintree, its entry into Australia will be a boon to developers there. The country's payment infratstructure is "antiquated" and can be difficult to integrate, the company said. With Braintree's payment platform, however, Australian developers will be able to integrate in minutes not months.

Braintree said it currently processes more than $5 billion in transactions on an annualized basis. Of that total, $1 billion is carried out via mobile device. 

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