Stripe and Advent Make $53 Billion Bid to Take PayPal Private

The startup that set out to disrupt payments now wants to buy the company that invented online payments, in what would be the largest fintech acquisition in history.

Payments giant Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal for more than $53 billion, according to sources who spoke to Reuters and the Financial Times.

The offer of $60.50 per share represents a 28% premium over PayPal's Tuesday closing price of $47.37. PayPal's stock surged more than 18% in pre-market trading on the news, reaching $56.10.

If completed, the deal would unite an extraordinary constellation of payment brands under one umbrella — Stripe, PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom — creating a processor that would dominate online card-not-present checkout. The combined entity would face significant antitrust scrutiny, with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for online checkout likely reaching levels that would have triggered automatic regulatory challenges in previous administrations.

The bid follows an earlier expression of interest from Stripe, though PayPal has been reluctant to engage with the offer thus far. Neither company has publicly commented.

The acquisition would also merge two of the most prominent mainstream stablecoin initiatives. Stripe has been building its own blockchain mainnet, Tempo, and joined the Open USD venture alongside Mastercard, Visa, and BlackRock. PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin currently holds the eighth-largest market cap in the sector at $185 million.

The move marks a stunning reversal of fortune. Stripe was founded in 2011 by Patrick and John Collison to simplify online payments — a direct challenge to PayPal's then-dominant but cumbersome developer experience. Now the challenger is positioned to swallow the pioneer.

Sources: TechCrunch, CoinDesk