Stripe, Advent Offer $53 Billion for PayPal in Blockbuster Deal

Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have offered more than $53 billion for PayPal, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. The bid values PayPal at $60.50 a share, a 28% premium to Tuesday's close. The proposal includes about $50 billion in committed bank financing, and the suitors would hold equal stakes without breaking up the company.

A combination of Stripe and PayPal would bring together two of the most aggressive stablecoin operators in fintech. Stripe spent the past two years building a payments-crypto stack. It bought stablecoin orchestration platform Bridge for $1.1 billion last year, then launched Tempo, a payments blockchain built with Paradigm that promises sub-second settlement. Stripe also backs Open USD, a fee-free stablecoin launched by 140 firms including Coinbase and Ripple, and plans to make it the default stablecoin across its own platform.

PayPal brings its own crypto infrastructure. The company issues PYUSD, one of the few stablecoins from a household-name fintech, and allows hundreds of millions of accounts to buy, sell, and check out with crypto. Folding those assets into Stripe's Bridge-and-Tempo architecture would create a single firm touching issuance, orchestration, settlement rails, and consumer checkout.

At $53 billion, the offer sits at roughly a seventh of PayPal's pandemic-era peak market value above $350 billion. The stock had fallen sharply after 2021, and the premium reflects how much ground the company lost. PayPal's Alpha Score is 45 out of 100 in AlphaScala's framework, placing the stock in a mixed position as the bid circulates.

The deal faces real obstacles. PayPal's board has not accepted the offer, and both Reuters and Bloomberg cautioned that talks could collapse. Antitrust reviewers may also push back against a merger of two of the largest online payment processors in the West. A formal response from PayPal's board is expected in the coming weeks.