The Wall Street Journal reported on August 14, 2026, that PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) is in talks to sell itself to a group including Stripe and private equity firm Advent International after Stripe and Advent’s initial July offer of $60.50 a share was rejected as too low, with the two sides now negotiating a higher price.
Why This Matters
PayPal’s market value has collapsed from a 2021 peak of about $360 billion to as low as roughly $36 billion this year. Now the company built by early digital-payments pioneers is negotiating its own sale.
That raises the real question: does a Stripe-Advent deal rescue PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL)’s business at a fair price, or does it confirm the company simply couldn’t turn around its slowing growth alone?
The Bull Case
The initial $60.50-per-share offer represented roughly a 28% premium to PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL)’s prior closing price and was backed by about $50 billion in committed bank financing. William Blair analyst Andrew Jeffrey said PayPal’s new CEO likely would not accept a “low-ball offer.” Blair predicated Stripe and Advent could go as high as $70 a share. Combining Stripe’s merchant-focused business with PayPal’s more than 430 million consumer accounts would create a combined payments giant processing about $3.7 trillion in annual volume. PayPal CEO Enrique Lores has already split the company into three units, checkout, Venmo, and payments and crypto, since taking over in March as part of a big recovery effort.
The Bear Case
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL)’s own struggles are exactly why a sale is on the table. Rivals like Apple Pay and Google Pay have taken. As of July, PayPal has lost more than 40% of its market value over just the past 12 months, and its market cap is still roughly one-tenth of its 2021 peak. There’s no guarantee talks result in a deal at all, since PayPal already rejected the first offer as insufficient.
Insider Monkey’s Hedge Fund Data
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) was held by 76 hedge funds as of Q1 2026, down from 78. For comparison, Visa was held by 181 hedge funds and Mastercard by 157, both far more widely held than PayPal.
Conclusion
PayPal’s fall from a $360 billion peak to a takeover target in five years is a real cautionary tale; whether the final price lands near $60 or closer to $70 a share will say a lot about how much value is actually left to save.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
