Stripe and a private equity firm called Advent International have offered to buy PayPal for more than $53 billion, according to sources cited by Reuters. The offer prices PayPal's stock at $60.50 per share, which is about 28% higher than the price it closed at on Tuesday, July 14, 2026 Reuters.

Reuters broke the story on the evening of July 14, citing unnamed sources. This is important to understand: neither PayPal, Stripe, nor Advent has confirmed the offer yet. Bloomberg later reported the same figures, crediting Reuters as the original source. What we know so far comes entirely from people said to be involved in the talks.

This isn't PayPal's first brush with a takeover bid. Back in February 2026, Reuters reported that PayPal had attracted interest from potential buyers after its stock price had fallen. That earlier report named no specific bidders and no price. The jump from a vague "someone is interested" in February to a concrete offer of $60.50 per share in July suggests months of behind-the-scenes deal work — financial due diligence, arranging loans, talking to the board — though the public hasn't been told any of those details.

What This Deal Could Mean

Stripe is a private company that builds the technology behind online checkout, billing, and financial tools for merchants. PayPal does similar work, but the two have historically served different customer types: PayPal built consumer-facing digital wallets and checkout buttons, while Stripe built tools for software developers and online stores. If these two combine, they would merge two of the world's largest networks for moving money online — a combination big enough that antitrust regulators will almost certainly take a long look at it.

Advent's involvement as a co-bidder signals that this deal will likely use a lot of borrowed money. That's standard practice: when a private company buys a much larger public company, the acquirer borrows heavily to make the purchase affordable. PayPal's total value before the 28% premium sits above $41 billion at Tuesday's market price; the premium adds several billion more on top, pushing the deal total past $53 billion. How much of that comes from loans, how much from Advent's own cash, and how much from Stripe's own money is unclear — and it matters a lot to banks and bond investors watching to see whether new debt gets issued for this deal.

What You Should Know About Deal Certainty

Here's the critical point: an "offer" is not the same as a done deal. It's a proposal. PayPal's board hasn't publicly said yes or no. Deals this large typically take months to move from an initial offer to a signed agreement, and during that time, other bidders might jump in, prices might shift, or the whole thing might fall apart.

When markets reopen and start trading PayPal's stock, there will be a price gap to watch. If PayPal trades well below $60.50, that signals investors don't think the deal will close — maybe because they doubt the financing will come through, worry about antitrust problems, or suspect PayPal will find a better offer. If it trades near or above $60.50, the market is betting the deal closes on these terms or that the price goes higher.

Regulatory approval is another big unknown. Combining two companies this large in the payments business — handling a huge chunk of online shopping transactions worldwide — will almost certainly attract scrutiny from US antitrust regulators, and possibly regulators in Europe and the UK as well. The question of what counts as "the payments business" has gotten murkier in recent years as the lines between payment processors, digital wallets, and financial technology tools have blurred.

None of this is settled. The financing structure is unconfirmed. PayPal hasn't said whether it welcomes the offer or not. The regulatory path forward is a blank. The only hard number is $60.50 a share, or more than $53 billion in total, representing a 28% premium to PayPal's stock price on the day before the story broke.