Stripe and Advent International have offered to acquire PayPal for $60.50 a share, valuing the company at more than $53 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The proposal, submitted earlier this month and backed by roughly $50 billion of committed bank financing, would give Stripe and Advent equal ownership of PayPal if a deal is reached.
PayPal has not responded to the approach, the people said. That silence matters. A 28% premium looks substantial against Tuesday's close, but it lands awkwardly against PayPal's long decline from its 2021 peak and the arrival of a new chief executive who has only just begun a restructuring. Enrique Lores has split the company into checkout, Venmo, and payments and crypto units, a move that often precedes sharper capital allocation, cleaner accountability, and, in some cases, a higher takeout price.
For Stripe, this is less about buying a rival than correcting a structural gap. Stripe dominates merchant software and payment infrastructure. PayPal brings 430 million consumer accounts, Venmo's network, and a checkout button with enduring reach. That combination would give Stripe a direct consumer distribution layer it has never fully owned, while increasing the share of transactions that can stay inside a broader proprietary ecosystem rather than leaking economics to card networks and intermediary processors.
There is also a race underway over what the next payments stack looks like. Stablecoins, wallet-based commerce, and embedded financial services all require distribution as much as technology. Stripe has invested heavily in crypto infrastructure through Bridge. PayPal offers a ready-made audience.
Advent's role is equally telling. This is a capital-intensive bet on a mature platform that still throws off cash but needs operational discipline and portfolio triage. Private equity has become more willing to underwrite complexity in payments if scale can unlock pricing power and lower unit costs.
Acquire.fyi data shows technology M&A value has reached $229.3 billion year to date, up 73.5% from a year earlier, even as deal volume has fallen. That pattern fits this bid. Fewer transactions. Bigger swings. If Stripe pushes closer to the $70 a share some analysts see as necessary, boards across fintech will read it as a signal that scale assets are back in play, but only at prices that reflect execution risk, not pandemic-era fantasy multiples.
Source: Company press release and Acquire.fyi's proprietary data
