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Stripe reportedly makes offer to acquire PayPal

2026-02-2422:1612784www.cnbc.com

PayPal's stock lost nearly a third of its value last year due to slowing growth and competition concerns.

PayPal's stock surged nearly 7% on Tuesday following a report that fintech startup Stripe is weighing buying the payments platform.

Bloomberg reported the news, citing people familiar with the matter, and said the discussions are in early stages. The report said Stripe is considering buying all or some segments of PayPal's business.

The news comes a day after reports that buyer interest has picked up in the company following its recent stock slump.

PayPal and Stripe declined to comment on the report.

PayPal, which is grappling with slowing growth in an increasingly competitive financial payments industry, has plummeted more than 19% since the start of the year. The company shed nearly a third of its value in 2025.

Earlier this month, the stock plunged on lackluster profit guidance and its board appointed HP's Enrique Lores as its new CEO to start at the beginning of March.

Meanwhile, fintech startup Stripe hit a $159 billion valuation on Tuesday following a secondary stock sale for employees and shareholders.

That's up from the $91.5 billion a year ago. Stripe said in a business update that its revenue suite is slated to reach an annual run rate of $1 billion this year.

Stripe, which ranked 10th on CNBC's Disruptor 50 list last year, has transformed into one of the most valuable private companies yet and recently acquired billing startup Metronome in January.

Stripe co-founder and president John Collison told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday that the company isn't yet aiming for an IPO, which would sidetrack its current product and business growth.

Read the full Bloomberg article here.

Stripe President John Collison on new tender offer, software sell-off and impact of AI

Read the original article

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Comments

  • By greatgib 2026-02-2423:556 reply

    Stripe is a pain in the ass as a buyer, so I really hope they won't be able to acquire competitors and become a de facto monopoly.

    For example, when you're traveling abroad and can't buy a service online with your card, you can be 95% sure that Stripe is the payment processor.

    • By okthrowman283 2026-02-250:193 reply

      Maybe true but I’ve never had a worse experience than I have with PayPal, truly an awful company

      • By piker 2026-02-250:331 reply

        Well for an expats, it's really a gamechanger not having to play three card monte selecting the correct card to use for each transaction. You would be surprised how many transactions are (accidentally?) geofenced based on where your card is issued from, and Paypal pretty much solves these.

        • By aitchnyu 2026-02-2510:48

          I'm an Indian with a few US subscriptions and Paypal was indispensable for years. When they set a KYC deadline involving some dude in a video call suddenly asking me to produce my Aadhar (national ID), I then discovered those services work with my debit cards perfectly. BTW autonomous charging of arbitrary amounts is not allowed in India, AFAIK.

      • By dataflow 2026-02-253:256 reply

        I know everyone here hates PayPal but I don't recall hearing anyone I know IRL complaining about it, for whatever that's worth.

        • By xtracto 2026-02-254:421 reply

          As a buyer PayPal saved me after being scammed. It was a breeze to claim my money back, once I filed a police report.

          Stripe and other normal card processors make it impossible. And before someone says to "charge back" with my bank, my card is from a country where that is almost impossible. In fact I think maybe only in the US that's actually practical, because in Germany I don't remember "charge backs" being a thing when i lived there.

          • By pm90 2026-02-256:59

            Ive had the opposite experience with paypal being completely obnoxious and refusing to halt a fraudulent transaction (ultimately my bank made them).

        • By stevekemp 2026-02-2510:051 reply

          I think the people who complained about paypal stopped using it.

          Back in the day I had a paypal account, as did many friends, solely because it was the only supported payment method on Ebay.

          After a few bad experiences I cancelled/closed my paypal account, and I know I'm not alone in that.

          These days the sight of a paypal payment form is an immediate tab-close. I've no wish to use them, support them, or go near them ever again.

          • By linhns 2026-02-2515:51

            I'm surprised by how bad and costly Paypal is. After switching to Revolut, happily dumped my PayPal account.

        • By omnimus 2026-02-256:49

          Might work for some countries (like US). But if you are from country with their own currency PayPal will only allow payout to account with that native currency. You get payed in USD you can't payout to USD account if your nation uses different currency. And of course they will also exchange that USD to your currency with their exchange rate that's 5-8% above services like Wise.

          Basically you either keep money in your Paypal and use it there or pay their cut. It's simply usury.

        • By swarnie 2026-02-256:59

          Is it because no one you know IRL uses paypay? It hasn't been relevant in a lot of countries since Ebay was popular in the mid 2000s.

          A free/standard current account will do physical/online payments, cash withdrawal, currency conversion, spending abroad ect ect.

        • By ErroneousBosh 2026-02-258:461 reply

          It's just a payment processor, one which only appears to be used for eBay.

          There's not a lot to complain about.

          Stick in your card details, shitty old 1990s computers and synthesizers and car parts arrive at your door. Hard to get it wrong, really.

          • By sgerenser 2026-02-259:551 reply

            PayPal hasn’t had any connection with eBay in years.

            • By ErroneousBosh 2026-02-2514:21

              But it's what eBay uses for its card payment gateway.

              I'm not sure what else you'd use Paypal for.

      • By pjmlp 2026-02-2514:06

        Well here in DACH space, it is one of the US providers that works best, then again maybe we should move away from them.

    • By hsbauauvhabzb 2026-02-251:46

      Stripe is also sending me emails with an unsubscribe button that requires me to authenticate. So they’re a pain as a user as well.

    • By chillfox 2026-02-250:56

      Yeah, but PayPal is an even bigger pain.

    • By p0w3n3d 2026-02-258:21

      Similar same happened to me, but in my country. I got a virtual stripe card to pay for the conference I was supposed to attend to and the fixing of problems took like five business days

    • By nodesocket 2026-02-2514:52

      You clearly didn’t have to use Authorize.net before Stripe came along. It was unspeakably bad.

    • By greggsy 2026-02-251:31

      Except in Australia, where it barely had 30% saturation, compared to Square’s 60%?

  • By openthc 2026-02-250:002 reply

    Not good. Stripe rejects anyone even close to the regulated cannabis space (with no room for appeal) but PayPal will accept these tranctions. So, this would put a non-zero amount of businesses (that don't even touch that deadly, deadly plant) in a tight spot with this monopolisation of the industry.

    • By xyzzy_plugh 2026-02-250:322 reply

      I don't think anything would change. If Stripe's underlying providers (banks) aren't involved then their requirements would not apply.

      Stripe doesn't want to reject anyone, but their banks/underwriters do not have a limitless appetite for risk.

      • By hnfong 2026-02-255:591 reply

        > but their banks/underwriters do not have a limitless appetite for risk.

        I'm trying not to be snarky here, but I really can't believe anyone can truly believe this.

        They almost blew up the global financial system. About once every two decades. What's the risk of accepting some transactions related to weed? (They can always charge more to offset the risk)

        It's not about financial risk, it's simply an attempt to exert control over what people could do with their own money.

        • By pm90 2026-02-257:021 reply

          MJ is still very illegal federally. Presumably anyone doing business in that industry could be sued or just have the feds come down on them. I don’t think we should expect financial institutions to break the law.

          • By karlshea 2026-02-2516:06

            Dildos aren’t illegal federally but you can’t sell those using Stripe either. It is actually about puritans wanting to control what you do.

      • By kotaKat 2026-02-2511:12

        > Stripe doesn't want to reject anyone,

        "Sorry, your Stripe account got closed because of 'crowdfunding' because you dared link it to a Ko-Fi account."

        And that's how I lost my Stripe account...

    • By sieep 2026-02-250:161 reply

      Someone new will arise to fill the market gap if there is demand. Saw it firsthand here with the Marijuana industry in Michigan shifting around payment providers to accept credit card transactions after it was legalized. A lot of hoops had to be jumped through. I think it still has the potential to be bad, but it does give opportunities.

      • By openthc 2026-02-250:301 reply

        If you had any pointers I'd be grateful

        • By sieep 2026-02-271:06

          Im not sure how the tech works, but they mimic ATM transactions at the POS system & then round up the transaction giving the customer cash back.

          This keeps things legal here in MI with a lot of potential for middleware software (between the dispo & bank) that automates compliance reporting that is required by banks. Shops that offer POS systems have competitive advantage still but that may no longer be the case.

  • By onesociety2022 2026-02-250:001 reply

    > Stripe hit a $159 billion valuation on Tuesday and said it was on track to reach an annual run rate of $1 billion this year.

    Wow! This is the quality of reporting from CNBC? The $1B ARR number is just for Stripe's Revenue products (Billing, Invoicing, etc). That doesn't include their main business (payments-related products).

    • By derwiki 2026-02-252:342 reply

      Wouldn’t ARR specifically mean subscription type products like you list? Payment processing isn’t annually recurring as I understand it.

      • By redwood 2026-02-253:11

        Maybe if you're being pedantic but let's assume they generate $1B to $3B in payments revenue on top of that non payments ARR. I don't see why you'd assume the former isn't likely to grow and so you might as well think of it as recurring. It's just low margin.

        Still a rich multiple at 40-70x

      • By RyanGWU82 2026-02-253:17

        In this case they reported Stripe's annual run rate — a metric that's roughly comparable to annual recurring revenue, but for non-recurring business models.

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