PayPal is in talks to be acquired by Stripe and private equity investor Advent International, in a deal that could be announced in the coming weeks. The proposed purchase would bring one of the biggest names in online payments under joint ownership.
Stripe and Advent offered $60.50 a share for PayPal in July, valuing the company at $53 billion. Before the proposal, PayPal was trading at a market value of around $40 billion. Stripe and Advent would each hold an equal stake and become PayPal’s joint owners.
PayPal declined to comment on the deal. The company has no plans to break up, and the negotiations focus on purchasing the business as one company rather than dividing it among separate buyers.
A sharp change from PayPal’s pandemic peak
The proposed valuation shows how far PayPal’s market value has fallen from its peak during the COVID pandemic. At the height of that period, PayPal was worth around $320 billion as e-commerce growth pushed more shoppers and businesses toward online payments.
That growth later became part of the company’s challenge. PayPal’s business expanded during the pandemic because of an e-commerce boom, but the company has struggled in recent years. Its market value before the offer stood at around $40 billion, leaving the proposed $53 billion price as a major premium over its trading value.
PayPal still operates at enormous scale. The company processes around $3.7 trillion in payments each year, giving Stripe and Advent a business with a large existing payments operation and a global customer base.
The talks also come as PayPal works through a leadership and structural shift.
Enrique Lores tries to reshape the business
PayPal named Enrique Lores as CEO in March. Lores has been trying to turn the business around by dividing it into three units: checkout, Venmo, and payments and crypto.
That structure places PayPal’s main checkout business alongside Venmo and its payments and crypto operations. The proposed acquisition would therefore bring all three units under Stripe and Advent’s equal ownership if the negotiations lead to a completed deal.
PayPal’s history adds another layer to the possible transaction. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, Luke Nosek, and others founded the company in 1998. Since then, PayPal has grown from its early roots into a payments business that handles around $3.7 trillion in annual transactions.
The company’s size makes the negotiations important even before any agreement is announced. A $53 billion valuation would place PayPal far above its market value before the proposal, though still well below its roughly $320 billion pandemic peak.
What the proposed ownership would mean
Stripe and Advent would not take separate pieces of PayPal under the current plan. They would each own an equal stake, creating a joint ownership arrangement for the entire company.
That approach matches PayPal’s decision to remain intact. The company has no plans to break up, while Lores’s division into checkout, Venmo, and payments and crypto gives the business three operating areas inside one organization.
The deal is not final, and the timing remains open. Potential announcements could come in the coming weeks, but the existing facts point only to negotiations and an offer, not a completed acquisition.
For PayPal, the proposed transaction arrives after a steep change in its market value, a new CEO, and an attempt to reorganize the business. For Stripe and Advent, it would mean taking equal control of a payments company that still processes trillions of dollars each year.
The next step is whether the talks produce a formal announcement. Until then, PayPal remains an independent company, with Stripe and Advent discussing a $53 billion purchase that would make them its joint owners.
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