Stripe and Advent Offer $53 Billion for PayPal, Company Hasn't Responded

A once-dominant payments company is now a takeover target

Stripe and private equity giant Advent International have made a joint offer to buy PayPal Holdings for $60.50 per share, according to Reuters, which cited two people familiar with the matter. That values PayPal at more than $53 billion. It's a 28% premium over PayPal's closing share price on Tuesday, July 14.

The bid comes backed by roughly $50 billion in committed financing from banks, Reuters reported.

Advent declined to comment when Reuters asked. PayPal and Stripe didn't respond to requests for comment. As of this writing, PayPal has issued no public statement confirming or rejecting the offer.

This has been brewing since February

Crypto Briefing reported that Bloomberg first flagged Stripe's interest in acquiring PayPal or its assets back in February 2026, when PayPal's market cap sat around $43 billion. That report alone sent PayPal shares up 7% in a single trading session, according to Crypto Briefing.

The formal offer, submitted earlier this month, follows an initial approach made in early April, according to Reuters' sources. Stripe and Advent haven't gotten a response and are looking to push discussions forward in the coming weeks.

Under the proposed structure, Stripe and Advent would each hold an equal stake in PayPal rather than splitting the company up, Reuters reported. A lot of these mega-deals end in someone chopping the target into pieces and selling them off. This one, at least as proposed, keeps PayPal intact under joint ownership.

How far PayPal has fallen

PayPal was an early pioneer in digital payments, founded in the late 1990s. Its market cap peaked at roughly $360 billion in 2021, during the pandemic-driven e-commerce boom.

Since then it's been a slow bleed. The company's valuation dropped as low as roughly $36 billion this year, and it's lost more than 40% of its market value over the past 12 months, according to Reuters. Apple Pay and Google Pay have eaten into its business, and consumers have simply found other ways to pay.

Alex Chriss, PayPal's CEO, has been running a turnaround plan, splitting PayPal's operations in April into three units: checkout, Venmo and consumer financial services, and a payments-and-crypto division, along with a series of management changes.

Whether that restructuring was working is now secondary if this deal goes through.

Why Stripe wants this

Stripe isn't hurting for cash. The company's valuation hit $159 billion following a tender offer that pulled in investors including Thrive Capital and Coatue, according to Crypto Briefing.

Stripe has also been building out crypto and stablecoin infrastructure aggressively. It bought Bridge, a stablecoin-payments company, for $1.1 billion in 2025, and followed that with the acquisition of Privy later the same year, per Crypto Briefing.

PayPal brings its own stablecoin play to the table: PYUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin aimed at PayPal's massive consumer base. Combine that with Stripe's infrastructure and you get a serious attempt to dominate the stablecoin and digital-payments space at once. Crypto Briefing noted that this could reshape the stablecoin landscape overnight if the deal closes, though it remains speculative until there's a signed agreement.

What could still blow this up

Combining two of the largest players in digital payments would draw serious antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. and likely in Europe too, given how both companies operate across more than 200 markets, according to NewsBytes.

There's also the plain fact that no deal exists yet. Crypto Briefing noted that as of mid-July 2026, no formal confirmation of the $60.50 figure or Advent's specific participation had been independently verified beyond the reporting cited by Reuters. An offer on paper and a signed transaction are two very different things, and PayPal's board hasn't tipped its hand.

For PayPal shareholders, the math is a mixed bag. A 28% premium sounds great until you remember this is a company that was worth $360 billion five years ago. Whalesbook noted that investors should watch whether the proposed $60.50 per share price provides sufficient value given the company's historical valuation peaks. A premium off a depressed base is still a discount off the highs.

The next move belongs to PayPal's board. Until they respond, formally accept, reject, or counter, this stays a proposal, not a deal, no matter how much financing is sitting behind it.