Stripe and private equity firm Advent have offered to acquire PayPal for around $53 billion, Net Interest's Marc Rubinstein reports, with the deal reportedly structured so Stripe and Advent would each own half of PayPal, backed by $50 billion in committed bank financing. The offer follows a secondary tender offer that valued Stripe itself at $159 billion, and it closes a loop that started in 2013, when PayPal, then still owned by eBay, tried to buy Stripe outright and was turned down by founders Patrick and John Collison. PayPal instead bought Braintree, the maker of Venmo, for $800 million, but over the following decade Stripe's payment volume compounded at 70% a year against Braintree's 43%. Last year Stripe processed $1.9 trillion in payments to Braintree's $600 billion. PayPal, meanwhile, has churned through three CEOs in three years and a string of missteps since. Rubinstein frames the central question as why Stripe, now the clear winner of that old rivalry, wants to buy the company it once tried to escape, and whether $53 billion is close to the right price, a question his fuller analysis addresses beyond this preview.
Why it matters · A Stripe-Advent takeover would end PayPal's run as an independent public company and hand control of one of the internet's original payment rails to its biggest private rival, reshaping who sets the terms for online checkout.
Worth asking · PayPal once had the chance to own Stripe for a fraction of today's price and passed. Is $53 billion a fair price for Stripe to finally close that loop, or is PayPal being bought cheap at the bottom of its own decline?