PayPal board deems $53bn Stripe–Advent takeover offer inadequate

Stripe and private equity firm Advent International offered $60.50 per share for PayPal, valuing it at more than $53bn, backed by roughly $50bn of committed bank financing from JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley alongside $17bn of equity from Stripe, Advent and Block. PayPal's board, advised by Goldman Sachs and Evercore, judged the bid inadequate, citing the valuation against its own turnaround plan, the certainty of financing, regulatory hurdles and a potentially lengthy timeline. The consortium remains the most serious bidder and further board meetings are scheduled.

Stripe and PayPal are the two most widely used online acceptance platforms; combined they would process roughly $3.7tn of annual payment volume. In Europe that would concentrate e-commerce acceptance sharply, leaving enterprise and SMB merchants a materially narrower choice of checkout providers and forcing Adyen, Worldline, Nexi and Checkout.com to compete against a rival with unmatched checkout distribution and consumer wallet reach.

Whether the consortium raises its offer before talks lapse, and whether the European Commission and the UK CMA signal an in-depth review of an online acceptance combination of this scale.

• rte.ie
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