PayPal Shares Surge: Fintech Giant Stripe Offers to Buy It — Reuters

One of the strongest players in the online payment processing market—the privately held platform Stripe—along with the private equity firm Advent International, has made a joint bid to acquire PayPal. Reuters reported this, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The deal calls for the company to pay $60.5 per share of PayPal Holdings. This is about 28% higher than Tuesday's closing price and values the entire company at more than $53 billion, the agency reports.

PayPal shares surged by more than 13% in after-hours trading on July 14 following this news. They have lost nearly 19% since the beginning of the year.

According to sources who spoke with Reuters, Stripe and Advent International made an offer to acquire PayPal earlier this month. To finance the deal, they have already secured bank guarantees totaling about $50 billion, one of the sources said. The buyers plan to keep PayPal as a single business and share control of it equally.

Moreover, this is not the first such proposal, according to sources who spoke with Reuters—companies had already put forward a similar initiative to PayPal in early April. Negotiations regarding the deal are ongoing. So far, there has been no response from PayPal.

Representatives from Stripe, Advent, and PayPal declined to comment.

Bloomberg reported back in February that Stripe was considering acquiring PayPal—either in whole or in part.

PayPal, founded in the late 1990s, was at the forefront of the digital payments industry. The company is now losing market share under pressure from Apple and Alphabet. In May, Bloomberg sources reported that PayPal plans to cut about 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years. This is part of new CEO Enrique Lores’ cost-cutting program. Since the beginning of last year, the company’s stock has fallen by more than 35%.

In February, after Bloomberg sources reported that Stripe was interested in PayPal, Semafor wrote that PayPal was not in sale talks with either Stripe or any other suitors. Against this backdrop, the company’s stock fell 3.8% that day. According to Semafor’s sources, PayPal was consulting with investment bankers at the time, preparing for potential attacks by activist investors or unwanted takeover bids.

Stripe, in turn, is one of the most sought-after players in the industry, according to Bloomberg. In February, following another round of employee stock purchases, the company’s valuation reached $159 billion.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor