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PayPal Was Once Worth $280 Billion. Now Stripe Wants to Buy It.
PayPal once looked almost untouchable.
In 2021, the payments giant was worth more than $280 billion.
Now, one of the world's biggest private fintech companies is discussing buying it.
Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International are in talks to acquire PayPal, according to people familiar with the situation.
But there is a catch.
The first offer wasn't good enough for PayPal.
The $53 Billion Offer
In July, Stripe and Advent reportedly offered $60.50 per PayPal share.
That valued PayPal at roughly $53 billion.
PayPal considered the offer too low.
The two sides have continued negotiating over a potentially higher price, but there is no deal yet and no guarantee one will happen.
PayPal shares closed at about $61.66 on Friday, giving the company a market value of roughly $54 billion.
Think about that difference.
A company that was once worth more than $280 billion is now being discussed in a deal worth around $53 billion.
That's an enormous fall.
But PayPal Isn't Dead
This is where the story gets more interesting.
PayPal still has major businesses.
Venmo continues to grow.
Braintree remains a major payments processor.
Its debit-card business is growing.
Its buy-now-pay-later business is growing.
And PayPal's second-quarter 2026 revenue increased 5% year over year to $8.68 billion.
So this isn't simply a company with nothing left.
It's a company whose market value has fallen dramatically despite still generating billions in revenue.
So Why Would Stripe Want It?
Stripe already has an enormous payments business.
Its valuation reached about $159 billion earlier this year.
Buying PayPal could give Stripe access to something difficult to build from scratch:
an enormous consumer network.
PayPal.
Venmo.
Braintree.
Checkout.
Debit cards.
Buy now, pay later.
Years of merchant relationships.
Millions of consumers.
That's not just technology.
That's distribution.
This Could Be About More Than PayPal
Stripe has traditionally been extremely strong on the infrastructure side of payments.
Developers and businesses use Stripe to accept payments and build financial products.
PayPal has something different.
It has a huge consumer-facing brand.
Put the two together and you potentially get:
Stripe's infrastructure + PayPal's consumer network.
That's a powerful combination.
And Advent brings something else: capital and experience in large acquisitions. The private-equity firm manages more than $90 billion in assets.
The $280 Billion Question
The biggest lesson may not be about Stripe at all.
It's about how quickly the market can change its mind about a company.
In 2021, investors valued PayPal at more than $280 billion.
Today, the company is being negotiated around the $53 billion range.
That's roughly an 81% decline from its peak valuation.
The business didn't disappear.
The internet didn't stop.
People didn't stop making payments.
But competition increased.
Growth slowed.
Investor expectations changed.
And the market stopped giving PayPal the premium valuation it once enjoyed.
PayPal Is Trying to Fight Back
The company has a new CEO, Enrique Lores, who took over in March.
His turnaround strategy includes significant cost cutting, reorganizing PayPal into three business segments and accelerating the company's use of artificial intelligence.
So PayPal has another option:
fix the company and remain independent.
That's probably one reason the first Stripe-Advent offer wasn't enough.
If management believes the turnaround can unlock substantially more value, selling now could mean selling too cheaply.
And That's What Makes This Deal Interesting
Stripe and Advent aren't necessarily buying a failed company.
They could be looking at a massive financial network that the market currently values much lower than it once did.
That's a very different kind of acquisition.
Sometimes companies buy growth.
Sometimes they buy technology.
Sometimes they buy talent.
And sometimes they buy distribution that would take decades to recreate.
PayPal has that.
But There Is No Deal Yet
This is important.
The reported talks are ongoing.
The original $60.50-per-share offer was rejected as too low, and the parties are discussing a potentially higher price. But nothing has been finalized.
So for now, PayPal remains independent.
But the negotiations reveal something much bigger about the payments industry.
The companies controlling digital payments today may not be the companies controlling them tomorrow.
And perhaps the most surprising part of this story is this:
Stripe isn't trying to buy PayPal because PayPal is at its strongest.
It may be interested because the market believes PayPal is worth far less than it once did.
Sometimes, the biggest opportunities in business appear when everyone else has stopped seeing the value.
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