Reuters reported the exclusive earlier today, citing sources familiar with the matter. The suitors are offering $60.50 a share, about 28% above Paypal’s (Nasdaq: PYPL) closing price on Tuesday.

Image source: X

The proposal is backed by about $50 billion in committed financing from banks. Stripe and Advent would jointly own Paypal with equal stakes, and the sources stressed the pair would not break up the company. The bid follows an initial approach made in April, with the formal proposal submitted earlier in July.

For crypto, the combination is difficult to overstate, given Stripe has spent two years assembling a holistic payments- crypto infrastructure. It first acquired Bridge, a stablecoin orchestration platform, in a record $1.1 billion deal, and subsequently unveiled Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain built with Paradigm (promising sub-second finality).

Stripe is also a backer of Open USD, the fee-free stablecoin launched by 140 firms including Coinbase and Ripple, and plans to make it the default stablecoin across its platform.

Paypal brings its own crypto stack into the mix as well. For starters, the company issues PYUSD, one of the few stablecoins launched by a household-name fintech, and offers crypto buying, selling, and checkout to hundreds of millions of accounts.

Folding those assets into Stripe’s Bridge-and-Tempo architecture would create a single company touching nearly every layer of dollar-token payments, be it issuance, orchestration, settlement rails, or consumer checkout.

A takeover of this size would rank among the largest fintech deals ever, and it faces obvious obstacles. Firstly, Paypal’s board has not yet accepted the offer, and there is no guarantee the talks will lead to a transaction, both Reuters and Bloomberg have cautioned. Antitrust reviewers could also scrutinize a merger of two of the largest online payment processors in the West.

Furthermore, the premium being offered reflects how far Paypal has fallen from its pandemic-era peak, when the company commanded a market value above $350 billion. At $53 billion, the bid values Paypal at roughly a seventh of that high, even after the stock’s recent recovery.

Looking ahead, Paypal needs to issue a formal response where its board must weigh a rich cash premium against surrendering the company’s independence at a fraction of its former value. However, the bid resolves, it confirms that stablecoin-era payments infrastructure has become the prize Wall Street’s biggest checkbooks are chasing.

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