Stripe and Advent Abandon $50B PayPal Takeover Bid
Stripe said to abandon $50B pursuit of PayPal
A consortium led by buyout firm Advent and payment processor Stripe has dropped its pursuit of PayPal, according to people familiar with the matter. The group had previously offered more than $50 billion for the fintech pioneer. The decision ends a months-long effort that would have been one of the largest fintech deals in history.
The group is no longer pursuing a deal for PayPal, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.
- c16
I like to think Stripe put $50B in a paypal account, and they got locked out with no way to get it back.
- wkoszek
PayPal might still be the sweetheart, but there's no innovation I feel. With eBay having CC support and being able to charge and return a charge back to the card, PayPal now is in a niche. I'm helping a founder recruit. To handle the load of candidates, we give folks applying some $ for doing a small 1hr project, and Claude told me that PayPal may still be universal way of sending a "gift amounts". I often wonder how much work would it be to bring IBAN accounts to the US. The need for Zelle baffles me, and the fact that person A can't send $ to person B via normal bank infrastructure is interesting.
- tyre
Makes sense:
> The takeover interest has helped it recover, with PayPal shares jumping more than 40% this quarter to give the company a market value of about $52.6 billion.
Seems like they tried to buy a struggling company and leaks of the talks made it too expensive.
- stefandesu
I've deleted my PayPal account last year and haven't regretted it. Admittedly it helped a lot that I live in Norway now where everyone uses Vipps (which is so much better), and PayPal is not a thing at all.
- rekttrader
Diligence told them they’re buying a almost dead payment processor with ancient tech. Customer lists are worth something but not that much.
- acd
There is us fair competition law Sherman anti trust act laws. "is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce and consequently prohibits unfair monopolies"
- ocd
I've been wondering about this since it came up in my newsreader that they wanted to acquire PayPal. Seemed like odd timing to me given PayPal has been questionable but necessary in a lot of cases for online businesses in international payments.
In Canada, we use Interac for more ordinary payments between ourselves, and the usual credit cards through card processors like Moneris or bank provided services in physical stores. I can imagine fewer uses for PayPal as time goes on, especially with the accelerated change driven by geopolitics. Visa and Mastercard may be at risk internationally for other countries seeking to keep payment processing entirely in their own yard.
This matter in particular made me wonder how things will go for Stripe going forward with these policy changes that may impact credit cards.
I'd love to delete my PayPal account and never log in again, but the use case for me right now is mostly that companies (outside Canada, and outside NA in most cases) usually only accept payment with PayPal.
- iSloth
Such a shame they didn't do anything with Braintree years ago and just let it rot