Stripe Inc. and private equity firm Advent International L.P. have reportedly offered more than $53 billion to buy PayPal Holdings Inc. in a deal that would take PayPal private and place one of the pioneers of online payments under the control of a younger, faster-growing rival.

The bidders are not looking to break the company apart. Stripe and Advent would hold equal stakes and keep PayPal operating as one business.

The offer is nonbinding and could still come apart in negotiation or regulatory review. Financing, at least, looks secured, with about $50 billion in bank commitments already lined up, according to Reuters.

PayPal goes back to 1998. eBay Inc. bought the payments service in 2002 for $1.5 billion, then spun it off as its own public company in 2015. Stripe was founded in 2010 and the younger company is now the larger one by valuation, a figure set at $159 billion in a February tender offer for employees and shareholders.

For Stripe, the appeal is reach. It grew up serving merchants, while PayPal spent years building a following among shoppers. Owning that base would give a merchant-focused fintech a far deeper footprint in consumer products, said Katherine Smith, a payments analyst at market research firm eMarketer Inc., in comments to Crowdfund Insider.

The two overlap in several areas, enough to attract antitrust scrutiny. Stripe’s payment gateway competes with PayPal’s Braintree unit. Both also compete for shoppers at checkout, Stripe with its Link tool and PayPal with its branded wallet.

Acquisitions have fueled much of Stripe’s growth. The company bought stablecoin infrastructure startup Bridge Ventures Inc. for about $1.1 billion in 2024 and crypto wallet provider Privy last year. PayPal would add more than 400 million active accounts and the PYUSD stablecoin, feeding Stripe’s expansion into digital currencies.

The bigger prize may lie in stablecoins. A combined Stripe and PayPal could become a major player in digital currencies as those tokens take on a larger role in global commerce, analysts at investment bank Mizuho Securities Co. Ltd. wrote in a note, though they kept a neutral rating on PayPal shares. They also flagged a rising threat from Elon Musk’s X-Money, which could challenge PayPal’s Venmo with high deposit yields and global reach.

PayPal stock rose 17% in regular trading today following the news.

Photo: PayPal