Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have jointly offered to acquire PayPal Holdings for $60.50 per share — a bid that values the payments company at more than $53 billion and would unite two of the most widely used online payment platforms in the world. The offer, submitted earlier this month and backed by approximately $50 billion in committed bank financing, represents a premium of roughly 28% to PayPal’s closing share price before the news broke. PayPal shares surged nearly 17% on the report.
The sources who disclosed the offer declined to be named given the confidential nature of the discussions. PayPal, Stripe, and Advent all declined to comment. The proposal follows an initial approach made in early April. Stripe and Advent have not yet received a formal response from PayPal and are seeking to advance discussions in the coming weeks. Under the structure proposed, both Stripe and Advent would hold equal stakes in a combined company, with no plans to break PayPal apart.
There is no certainty the approach will result in a transaction.
Why the Deal Makes Strategic Sense
The logic behind combining Stripe and PayPal is straightforward — and significant. Stripe’s business has been built almost entirely around serving merchants, giving it deep relationships with businesses that process payments online. PayPal brings more than 430 million consumer accounts and direct consumer banking and payment relationships that Stripe has never had.
Together, the two companies would process approximately $3.7 trillion in annual payment volume — creating one of the largest global online payments entities ever assembled. The combination would allow more transactions to flow across an internally controlled network, reducing reliance on processors such as Visa and Mastercard, bypassing transaction fees, and capturing more revenue from each payment.
For Stripe specifically, PayPal’s consumer-facing assets are highly valuable. PayPal’s checkout button and Venmo’s peer-to-peer network would give Stripe direct consumer relationships that could materially accelerate its efforts to build a competitive digital wallet. PayPal’s consumer offerings “could be attractive to materially accelerate” Stripe’s efforts in that space, said TD Cowen analyst Bryan Bergin. The deal could also strengthen Stripe’s stablecoin ambitions — giving it a vast consumer distribution network to help drive mainstream adoption of stablecoin-based payments through its crypto unit, Bridge.
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PayPal’s Journey From Peak to Acquisition Target
PayPal’s trajectory since the pandemic tells a stark story. The company’s market capitalisation peaked at roughly $360 billion in 2021 as digital payments surged during COVID-19 lockdowns. As consumer behaviour normalised and competition intensified — from Apple Pay, Google Pay, and a wave of fintech challengers — that value collapsed. PayPal’s market cap fell to as low as $36 billion earlier this year, and the stock has lost more than 40% of its value over the past 12 months.
The company hired a new CEO, Enrique Lores, in March and began a sweeping restructuring. In April, PayPal split into three operational units covering checkout, consumer financial services including Venmo, and payments and crypto, alongside a series of management changes. In May, Lores outlined plans to use artificial intelligence to streamline operations and eliminate duplicated workforce layers, with the company projecting $1.5 billion in savings over two to three years — all of which it plans to reinvest in new growth initiatives. Revenue in the first quarter rose 7% to $8.35 billion, beating analyst estimates, with total payment volumes up 8% year-over-year on a currency-neutral basis to $464 billion.
Despite that recovery effort, the $60.50 offer may not be enough. Analyst Andrew Jeffrey of William Blair said PayPal’s new CEO was unlikely to embrace what could be characterised as an undervalued opening offer. “If the current offer is an opening salvo, we could see Stripe and Advent go as high as $70 per share,” he said.
The Broader Payments M&A Wave
The potential PayPal deal arrives amid a period of rapid consolidation across the global payments sector. In 2025, Global Payments agreed to acquire Worldpay from FIS and private equity firm GTCR for $24.25 billion. Canadian payments firm Nuvei — which is itself backed by Advent International — acquired Payoneer Global for $2.75 billion. This week, the Financial Times reported that Mastercard is exploring the sale of a majority stake in its UK payments subsidiary Vocalink back to British banks, amid concerns about a critical financial infrastructure asset being under US ownership.
Payment companies are increasingly seeking scale and exposure to faster-growing segments — cross-border payments, business-to-business transactions, and crypto-adjacent financial services — as growth in traditional payment processing has slowed. The combination of Stripe and PayPal would represent by far the most consequential deal of this cycle.
Stripe, founded in 2010 by brothers John and Patrick Collison, was valued at $159 billion in a February tender offer for employees and shareholders — more than a 70% jump from a similar valuation exercise a year earlier, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world. A PayPal acquisition at the proposed terms would be a transformative bet on the future of consumer and merchant payments in a single transaction.
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