Stripe and Advent move on PayPal with $53B cash bid

Stripe and Advent’s $53bn swing at PayPal

Stripe and Advent International have submitted a cash offer of $60.50 per share for PayPal, valuing the company at more than $53bn, according to Reuters.

The bid is backed by about $50bn in committed bank financing, and the two buyers would hold equal stakes in the business. Unusually for a deal involving a private equity firm, they say they do not plan to break up PayPal.

The proposal was submitted earlier this month, following an initial approach in early April, and PayPal has not responded to either, per the report.

Advent’s double exposure to the payments fight

Advent has been busy in payments.

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In 2024, the firm took Canadian processor Nuvei private in a $6.3bn deal. Nuvei is now in the process of buying Payoneer for $2.75bn with the explicit goal of building a rival to Stripe.

If the PayPal acquisition goes through, Advent will effectively be funding both sides of that competition.

A premium to today, a discount to 2021

The $60.50 offer represents roughly a 28% premium to PayPal’s Tuesday close of about $47.

Stacked against recent trading, it’s a generous number. Set against PayPal’s own history, it looks harsh: the company’s market value peaked near $360bn in 2021, dropped to roughly $36bn earlier this year, and is down more than 40% in the past 12 months.

PayPal: from default option to turnaround project

Founded in the late 1990s, PayPal was for about a decade the default way to pay a stranger online. Over time, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and a wave of fintech competitors have chipped away at that habit.

The company is also mid-reset. In February, the board removed chief executive Alex Chriss, saying the pace of change and execution under him had not met expectations, and issued a 2026 profit forecast so far below Wall Street’s that the stock fell 19% in a single session.

Enrique Lores, previously CEO of HP, took over on March 1.

Analysts at Evercore ISI framed the strategic choice at the time:

whether the incoming chief executive would “bring in a formidable payments team to attempt yet another multi-year turnaround or look to start reviewing options for strategic assets”.

Five months later, the second option is on the table—triggered by outsiders rather than management.

Lores' early moves and PayPal’s numbers

Lores has moved quickly. In April he split PayPal into three units:

• Checkout
• Consumer financial services and Venmo
• Payments and crypto

In May, he outlined a plan to use AI to cut duplicated layers of work, targeting about $1.5bn in savings over two to three years, all earmarked for reinvestment.

Operationally, there are early signs of stabilization. First-quarter revenue rose 7% to $8.35bn, beating an $8.05bn consensus, while total payment volume increased 8% on a currency-neutral basis to roughly $464bn.

The bid, then, hits a company that has stopped falling, rather than one that has clearly started to climb.

Stripe’s growth arc and the agentic thesis

Stripe’s trajectory looks very different.

It was valued at $159bn in a February tender offer for employees and shareholders, more than 70% above a comparable sale a year earlier. Stripe processed $1.9tn of payments in 2025, up 34%.

The company is privately held, co-headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, and co-founder John Collison has argued that agentic commerce will remake online shopping outright.

Payments has already been consolidating around similar ideas. Global Payments agreed last year to buy Worldpay from FIS and GTCR for $24.25bn, Mastercard agreed to pay up to $1.8bn for BVNK, and Airwallex raised at an $11bn valuation last month on the thesis that software agents will soon do the buying.

Owning PayPal would give Stripe something that cash and code can’t replicate quickly: a consumer-facing brand that millions already trust with card details.

What happens next

Stripe and Advent want to advance talks in the coming weeks and are pushing for a deal by the end of the month, according to the report.

PayPal, Stripe, and Advent all declined to comment. There is no certainty the talks will result in a transaction.