The Stripe and Advent PayPal bid, valued at approximately $53.4 billion, landed earlier this month with a price tag that is hard to ignore: $60.50 per share, a roughly 28% premium to PayPal’s closing price the day before Reuters broke the story on 15 July 2026. The market noticed. PayPal’s stock jumped 16% in premarket trading that morning, which is the kind of response that turns a rumour into a conversation.
Reuters reports the offer is backed by roughly $50 billion in committed bank financing, with Stripe and private equity firm Advent International taking equal ownership stakes if a deal closes. No response has come from PayPal yet, and according to CNBC, the two bidders are seeking to advance discussions over the coming weeks. Sources are explicit that there is no certainty the approach results in a transaction.
Inside the Stripe and Advent PayPal Bid: Why This Price, Why Now
The 28% premium looks generous until you zoom out on the chart. Yahoo Finance reports that PayPal’s market cap peaked at around $360 billion in 2021, then cratered to approximately $36 billion earlier in 2026. A $53.4 billion deal, in that context, is an opportunistic bid on a company still trading well below its former self, not a generous rescue.
The financials explain the discount. Yahoo Finance UK notes that PayPal’s non-GAAP operating income fell 5% to $1.54 billion and non-GAAP net income dropped 7% to $1.23 billion in a recent reporting period. The stock currently trades at a forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 10.00x, a steep discount to the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry average of 17.12x. Meanwhile, PayPal’s Q1 2026 SEC filing shows net income of $1,113 million for the three months ended March 31, 2026, down from $1,287 million in the same period a year earlier.
Scale, however, is not the problem. PayPal serves around 440 million active accounts and handled roughly $1.8 trillion in payment volume during 2025. Stripe processed $1.9 trillion over the same period. Combined, the two would be processing volumes that make most payments infrastructure look like a side project.
A Company Mid-Restructure, and a CEO Still Finding His Feet
The bid lands as PayPal is in the middle of a significant internal overhaul. CEO Enrique Lores, formerly chair of PayPal’s board and CEO of HP Inc., took on the chief executive role effective 1 March 2026 following a company profit warning. Since then, PayPal has announced plans to cut at least $1.5 billion in costs over the next two to three years and has reportedly been looking to reduce its workforce by around 20%.
In a parallel move, PayPal’s investor relations newsroom announced a strategic reorganisation transitioning the company to a simplified three-business model: Checkout Solutions & PayPal, Consumer Financial Services & Venmo, and Payment Services & Crypto. It is the kind of clean-slate restructuring that either signals a company getting serious about its future, or one making itself easier to carve up for a buyer.
Stripe, for its part, arrives at this negotiating table from a position of strength. Its valuation climbed to $159 billion earlier this year, and the company now processes more annual payment volume than PayPal. An acquisition would give Stripe the consumer footprint it currently lacks: PayPal’s 440 million accounts, Venmo’s embedded presence in everyday spending, and a brand that still has genuine recognition outside the developer ecosystem Stripe has traditionally called home.
For Advent International, the logic is more straightforward. Private equity firms buy distressed or undervalued assets, restructure them, and sell. PayPal, trading at a 10x forward earnings multiple while its industry peers trade at 17x, fits that profile. Pairing with Stripe provides the operational credibility to convince PayPal’s board the bid is serious.
The Stripe and Advent PayPal bid has a lot of moving parts still to resolve. PayPal has not responded publicly, and both sides have given themselves weeks, not days, to find out whether a formal process begins. The February discussions that went nowhere are a useful reminder that interest and a signed deal are very different things.
Watch for PayPal’s formal response and any counter-moves from the board as the most immediate signal of whether this goes further, or joins the long list of deals that got as far as a leaked bid and no further.
