Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International have submitted a joint bid of $60.50 per share for PayPal, valuing the payments giant at roughly $53 billion. The offer represents a 28% premium over PayPal's closing price before the bid was made public. PayPal has not yet responded to the proposal, which was first floated in April and formally submitted earlier this month.
What the bid includes
The all-cash offer is backed by about $50 billion in committed bank financing. Under the terms, Stripe and Advent would hold equal stakes and plan to keep PayPal intact rather than break it up. That structure sets the bid apart from typical private-equity takeovers, which often involve splitting a company into pieces. The $53 billion price tag is a far cry from PayPal's peak market value of $360 billion in 2021. Over the past 12 months, its market cap has fallen roughly 40% to about $36 billion.
Why Stripe and Advent want PayPal
Stripe, the online payments processor, already owns Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure platform it bought for $1.1 billion in 2025. PayPal runs its own stablecoin, PYUSD, which has a market cap of nearly $2.9 billion. Combining Bridge's issuance tools with PYUSD's consumer base would give the combined firm both ends of the stablecoin stack — the ability to mint and distribute a digital dollar directly to millions of users. That vertical integration is a key strategic rationale for the deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The stablecoin play
PayPal's PYUSD is one of the largest stablecoins by market cap, though it still trails market leaders Tether and USDC. Stripe's Bridge technology lets businesses issue and manage stablecoins. Together, they could create a closed-loop system where PayPal merchants and consumers transact in PYUSD without relying on third-party rails. The bid also comes as global merger activity hits record levels. Deal volume reached $2.8 trillion in the first half of 2026, and is on pace to hit $4 trillion for the full year.
What happens next
PayPal's board is expected to review the offer in the coming weeks. The company has not indicated whether it will engage with Stripe and Advent, or seek alternative bids. If the deal goes through, it would be one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history and a major bet on the convergence of traditional payments and crypto infrastructure.
