Payment processing giant Stripe and private equity firm Advent International are in active negotiations to acquire PayPal Holdings, according to The Wall Street Journal. The investor group is seeking a revised agreement after PayPal’s board rejected an initial $60.50 per-share takeover proposal in July that valued the digital payments pioneer at approximately $53 billion.
Read: Google unveils Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL
Prior to the July bid, PayPal was trading near multi-year lows with a market valuation of roughly $40 billion, down nearly $320 billion from its peak valuation during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While negotiations remain fluid and could still collapse, both sides are discussing a higher purchase price per share and could reach an agreement in the coming weeks.
Under the proposed ownership structure, Stripe and Advent would take equal stakes as joint owners without breaking up PayPal’s underlying operations. A successful takeover would turn Stripe into one of the world’s dominant financial technology companies, expanding its processing capacity to an estimated $3.7 trillion in annual transaction volume.
See also
The acquisition talks come during an ongoing operational turnaround at PayPal. Following his appointment in March, CEO Enrique Lores restructured the company into three standalone operating units cantered on merchant checkout, Venmo, and payments alongside crypto features.
It remains unconfirmed how PayPal’s newly implemented organizational structure would be absorbed post-acquisition. However, acquiring PayPal would allow Stripe to incorporate Venmo’s consumer base, PayPal’s established merchant checkout infrastructure, and its digital asset capabilities directly into Stripe’s product suite, while simultaneously reducing Stripe’s strategic reliance on traditional credit card networks like Visa and Mastercard.
