Thanks Dan,
I meant to update this yesterday but still had some other outstanding PS issues to resolve.
I ended up buying the Braintree module from Bellini Services on the addons store. It was having similar issue, so for me it wasn't either module. Mike at Bellini, great customer service, pointed me in the right directions and I was able to stumble through the forums to find this solution below:
I was using PS 1.6.1.0 (not sure if these specific issues were fixed in 1.6.1.1 or not). My PS error log was reporting: Exception occured Syntax error in template ..MyTheme../mails/en/order_conf_product_list.txt
I found a solution to this specific problem here:
https://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/368367-solved-payment-validation-problem/ I edited order_conf_product_list.txt and removed all slashes.
This fixed the issue with the Braintree Module and I assume it would have fixed PayPal too
However my order/confirm/etc email formats were all messed up, blue background, no html, lots of those slashes in the code. When I was attempting to fix them I got locked out of the translation email templates are and needed to increase my memory. I followed the thread below to modify the php.ini. I also thought I had previously disabled the magic quotes, but I was unable to get this php.ini to increase the memory until I put it in my admin folder. Once I got this php.ini in the admin folder the memory increased and the turn off magic quotes worked fixing my email templates.
https://www.prestashop.com/forums/topic/235573-max-input-vars-1000-solved/
No idea if this will fix the issues you are still having but everything seems to be working now on my end. The module switch cost $40 but having Mike from Bellini help troubleshoot was worth it. Braintree is pretty straight forward, the module has two settings, which I'm unsure which is best, but you can accept Paypal and cards directly on the page.