Stripe and Advent International have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal $PYPL Holdings for $60.50 per share, valuing the payments company at more than $53 billion, according to Reuters, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
The offer — put forward earlier this month — carries approximately $50 billion in committed bank financing and was priced at a 28% premium over PayPal's Tuesday close. The proposal calls for Stripe and Advent to share ownership of PayPal on an equal basis, with no plans to dismantle the company.
PayPal has not responded to the offer. Reuters reported that the two firms are pushing to move talks forward over the next several weeks. An earlier approach was made in early April. Stripe, Advent, and PayPal all declined to comment.
PayPal stock was up about 16% in premarket trading Wednesday.
Stripe, a privately held payments company valued at $159 billion following a February employee tender offer, would gain a major foothold in consumer payments through the deal. Advent International is a private equity firm. The acquisition, if completed, would rank among the largest in the payments sector in recent years.
PayPal has been navigating a prolonged turnaround after years of slowing growth and intensifying competition from rivals including Apple $AAPL Pay and Google $GOOGL Pay. At its height in 2021, PayPal's market cap reached around $360 billion; the outlet noted it has since dropped to a low of approximately $36 billion this year. PayPal stock has lost more than 40% of its value over the past 12 months.
PayPal announced plans to cut roughly 20% of its workforce — approximately 4,760 roles — over the next two to three years as part of a restructuring effort expected to generate at least $1.5 billion in gross run-rate savings. Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores, who took the helm in March after the board determined that progress under his predecessor, Alex Chriss, had not moved quickly enough, has reorganized the company into three units covering checkout, consumer financial services and Venmo, and payments and crypto. Lores has also outlined plans to integrate artificial intelligence across operations to reduce duplication.
In the first quarter, PayPal brought in $8.35 billion in revenue, while total payment volumes reached about $464 billion — up 8% year over year when stripping out currency effects.
The potential deal would add to a wave of consolidation in the global payments industry. A notable recent example was Global Payments' 2025 agreement to buy Worldpay from FIS and GTCR in a transaction valued at $24.25 billion.