The company that trained the internet to trust digital wallets may soon be shopping for a new owner. According to fresh reporting from the Wall Street Journal, talks to sell PayPal to payments rival Stripe and private equity heavyweight Advent International have picked up momentum, with a deal potentially coming together in the weeks ahead.
The storyline began in July, when Stripe and Advent floated a joint offer of US$60.50 per share — a bid that valued PayPal at roughly US$53 billion. PayPal’s board formally rejected that proposal on July 20, 2026. But rejection, it turns out, was not the end of the conversation. Negotiations reportedly never actually stopped, and as of mid-August the two sides are still at the table. Under the structure being discussed, Stripe and Advent would each hold an equal stake in the acquired company.
PayPal, for its part, declined to comment. A Stripe spokesperson said the company doesn’t “comment on rumors or speculation” — the corporate equivalent of a knowing shrug.
The backdrop here is a business trying to rediscover its footing. CEO Enrique Lores, who joined PayPal in March after years at HP, has been steering an aggressive turnaround. In April he reshuffled the executive bench and reorganized the company into three operating units:
- Checkout solutions and PayPal
- Consumer financial services, including Venmo
- Payment services and crypto
A month later, Lores told investors that PayPal would recommit to “the fundamentals” — a plan he summarized with the goal of “becoming a technology company again.” That ambition comes with a hard edge: the turnaround also includes cost cuts expected to shrink PayPal’s workforce by 20% over the next two to three years.
There’s a certain irony in all this. PayPal was founded in 1998 by a roster of soon-to-be Silicon Valley legends — Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, Luke Nosek and others — whose alumni network reshaped the tech industry. The company boomed during the pandemic’s e-commerce surge, then struggled to hold that altitude as growth cooled and rivals like Stripe gobbled up developer-friendly payment infrastructure.
A sale would be a striking outcome: one of the internet’s original payment giants folded into a younger competitor and a private equity firm. Whether Lores’ rescue plan and a buyout are mutually exclusive — or two versions of the same escape hatch — is the question hanging over the next few weeks. For now, the terms on the table remain the July numbers, and nothing is signed.
