Ce serait la plus grosse acquisition jamais tentée dans la fintech.
Stripe, the online payments company founded by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison, and the American investment fund Advent International have submitted a joint buyout offer for PayPal, valuing the American online payments pioneer at more than $53 billion.
An offer of $60.50 per share
The two suitors are offering $60.50 per share, about a 28% premium to PayPal’s closing price on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange. The deal, unveiled earlier this month, is backed by roughly $50 billion in bank financing already committed, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by Reuters and the Financial Times.
The arrangement envisions Stripe and Advent sharing PayPal ownership equally, with no intention of breaking up the company. This is not the first attempt: an approach had already been made in early April. The two groups would seek to move discussions forward in the coming weeks.
Market reaction was immediate. PayPal’s stock jumped as much as nearly 19% in early trading on Wednesday, reaching $56.45, as investors welcomed an unexpected premium after a disastrous stock market year.
What Stripe Would Seek
The strategic interest is clear. Stripe, whose technology is primarily aimed at businesses, would add consumer-facing applications to its offer — and above all, a colossal user base: PayPal has more than 439 million active accounts and processed roughly $1.8 trillion in payment volume in 2025.
The math of the buyout works thanks to Stripe’s trajectory. The company, still private, was valued at about $159 billion in February during an employee stock-option buyback deal — a jump of more than 70% compared with a similar transaction a year earlier. It processed $1.9 trillion in payment volume in 2025, up 34% year over year. At a valuation approaching three times the price offered for PayPal, the deal remains financing-friendly, even for a company that has never been publicly traded. Together, the two platforms would handle an estimated annual volume of $3.7 trillion.
The turnaround is striking. Founded in 2010 by the Collison brothers who left Ireland for the United States to raise funds, Stripe partly grew by directly targeting PayPal’s merchant base. Today, it is the younger, still private company trying to absorb the one that inspired it.
PayPal, the fall of a pioneer
PayPal is going through a rough patch. Cofounded in the late 1990s by Peter Thiel — Elon Musk was briefly its CEO — the company had revolutionized online payments. Its market capitalization peaked at nearly $360 billion in 2021, before crashing: the stock has fallen about 84% since that peak, including almost 19% in the current year alone.
Causes include fierce competition from Stripe, Apple Pay, and Klarna, a persistent weakness in checkout payments, and disappointing earnings forecasts for 2026. The group has also been swept up in the tech sell-off this year, amid concerns about their exposure to rising artificial intelligence. PayPal has undertaken a major restructuring, planning to cut about 20% of its workforce — around 4,760 jobs — over two to three years, for at least $1.5 billion in gross annualized savings.
Its board has mandated Goldman Sachs and Evercore to evaluate strategic options, including a potential sale.
Advent, a sector veteran
Stripe’s financial partner is no novice. Founded in Boston in 1984, Advent International managed $94 billion in assets and showed more than 450 investments as of March 2026.
Payments is one of its specialties: the firm says it has invested or committed more than $7.8 billion in 18 payments and fintech companies since 2008, including Worldpay, Vantiv and Nexi — a solid track record in financing, spin-offs, and operational restructuring of major payment processors.
Still an uncertain outcome
Caution remains warranted. PayPal has not responded to the offer, and the Financial Times indicates that the group might be reluctant to engage in dialogue with its two suitors, deeming it unlikely that a transaction would close at the proposed valuation. This is an approach, not a deal: the board could insist on a much higher price. The deal would also face a stringent regulatory review.
If it were to go through, it would be part of a wave of consolidation shaking up global payments, where players seek critical scale and exposure to the most dynamic segments — cross-border and B2B payments — in the face of slowing traditional processing. In 2025, Global Payments had already acquired its rival Worldpay from FIS and the GTCR fund for $24.25 billion.
