Stripe Wants To Buy PayPal In A $53 Billion Deal, Sending Its Shares Soaring.

PayPal shares surged Wednesday after Stripe and private equity firm Advent International submitted a joint offer worth more than $53 billion for the company that helped bring digital payments into mainstream online commerce.

The proposed acquisition would pair two companies associated with different periods of the internet economy. PayPal emerged in the late 1990s and became one of the defining payment platforms of the early e-commerce era, while Stripe grew during the following decade by supplying payment-processing software and financial infrastructure to online businesses.

Stripe and Advent offered $60.50 for each PayPal share, about 28% above the company’s closing price of $47.37 on Tuesday. The proposal, submitted earlier this month, is supported by approximately $50 billion in committed bank financing, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the discussions.

PayPal shares climbed more than 16% on Wednesday. The stock remained below the reported offer price, reflecting that PayPal has not agreed to the proposal and that no transaction has been announced.

PayPal has not responded to the offer, while Stripe and Advent are seeking to move the discussions forward. PayPal, Stripe and Advent declined to comment, according to CNBC.

Under the proposal, Stripe and Advent would each hold an equal stake in PayPal and retain the company as a single business rather than dividing its operations or selling individual assets. The formal offer followed an initial approach in early April, according to Reuters. There is no certainty that the approach will lead to a completed transaction.

The bid highlights the reversal in the companies’ relative positions within the payments industry. PayPal was already a widely recognized consumer payments brand when Stripe was founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010. Stripe subsequently expanded by providing businesses with tools to accept payments, send payouts, manage subscriptions and automate other financial processes.

Stripe was valued at $159 billion through an employee and shareholder tender offer in February, an increase of more than 70% from a similar transaction a year earlier. The privately held company now has headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin.

PayPal’s market value, by comparison, reached approximately $360 billion during the online-shopping boom in 2021 before falling as low as roughly $36 billion this year. Its shares have lost more than 40% of their value during the past 12 months amid slower growth and increasing competition from Apple Pay, Google Pay and other payment services.

PayPal closed Tuesday with a market capitalization of about $41.8 billion, Business Post reported. At the proposed $60.50-a-share price, Stripe and Advent would pay a substantial premium to PayPal’s unaffected market value but considerably less than the company was worth at its pandemic-era peak.

The reported approach comes during another restructuring at PayPal. Enrique Lores, the former chief executive of HP, took over as PayPal’s president and CEO in March after the board replaced Alex Chriss, who had been appointed in 2023 to lead an earlier turnaround effort.

In April, PayPal reorganized its operations into three units covering checkout, Venmo and consumer financial services, and payments and crypto. Lores has also outlined plans to simplify the company, remove duplicated management layers and redirect spending toward growth.

PayPal expects those measures to generate approximately $1.5 billion in savings over the next two to three years, with the money reinvested in the business.

The company nevertheless reported growth during the first quarter. Revenue increased 7% to $8.35 billion, exceeding the $8.05 billion expected by analysts. Total payment volume rose 8% from the previous year on a currency-neutral basis to approximately $464 billion.

PayPal entered 2026 facing skepticism over whether its latest investments could restore stronger growth. The company issued weaker-than-expected annual profit guidance earlier this year, forecasting that adjusted earnings could decline by a low-single-digit percentage.

Analysts at Citi said in a July 7 note that PayPal was investing heavily in its turnaround but that investors remained cautious after earlier efforts failed to reverse the slowdown, according to CNBC.

Stripe has been expanding beyond its original online payment-processing business. The company processed $1.9 trillion in transactions last year, an increase of 34% from 2024 and nearly double the amount recorded two years earlier.

It has also increased its involvement in cryptocurrency payments and stablecoin infrastructure. Stripe acquired stablecoin platform Bridge and crypto wallet provider Privy and has joined other financial companies developing Open USD, a dollar-backed stablecoin.

PayPal operates its own stablecoin, PayPal USD, or PYUSD, and owns consumer-facing payment services including Venmo, Braintree and Xoom. Stripe and PayPal are among the mainstream financial companies connecting stablecoins with established payment systems, CoinDesk reported.