Stripe reportedly makes offer to acquire PayPal

(cnbc.com)

39 points | by nodesocket 2 hours ago ago

22 comments

  • greatgib 13 minutes ago

    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.

  • onesociety2022 8 minutes ago

    > 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).

  • openthc 8 minutes ago

    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.

  • mohsen1 29 minutes ago

    I used to live in the United States and recently moved to Germany. Using PayPal for payments is a lot more common here than Germany. In fact I connected my Uber account to my credit card via PayPal and my partner pays for a lot of things online via PayPal.

    PayPal is also used for transferring money between friends and family quite frequently

    • ks2048 9 minutes ago

      I have been trying to help someone in Guatemala receive payments from international tourists and PayPal seems to be the best option we've found, even though I don't like using it (horror stories about money being stranded in locked account, etc).

  • givemeethekeys 24 minutes ago

    Will anyone be getting arrested for insider trading? It spiked on rumors yesterday when nearly everything else was collapsing.

    • agency 20 minutes ago

      Haven't you heard? Crime is legal

      • rvz 13 minutes ago

        Also anti-trust, monopolies and insider trading are all legal.

        The SEC won't do anything.

  • malfist an hour ago

    That feels like it would be a pretty significant blunder for stripe. Paypal is everything that stripe isn't. Legacy, confusing, slow, expensive and hidebound.

    • general1465 an hour ago

      On the other hand, they are getting rid of a competitor.

      • adventured 21 minutes ago

        They're going to become PayPal. There's no scenario where that doesn't happen as they get larger and larger and larger. Especially as competition is eliminated.

  • 4d66ba06 25 minutes ago

    That would mean they would be acquiring Venmo as well?

    I feel like PayPal is slowly degrading, I hope Stripe would find a way to modernize it.

  • adventured 22 minutes ago

    Stripe is overvalued by about 10x judging by Block and PayPal.

    Best case scenario: Stripe gets larger, gets bloated, slower, eats some competitors, becomes their competitors. The street presses down on their valuation as their growth races toward single digits. Congratulations.

    Block is fetching ~13 times op income. PayPal is fetching ~7 times op income.

    • master_crab 16 minutes ago

      And it’s still private. So no proper price finding has occurred yet.

      • adventured 12 minutes ago

        People always want the upstart hotness. Look at the shiny growth (which is meaningless if they're just going to end as a slow growth obese giant anyway, it's all rinse & repeat).

        Maybe Stripe sees the end writing on the wall and they're going for it while the bubbly action is there.

  • clumsysmurf 26 minutes ago

    > PayPal’s stock has plummeted over the last year as it faces slowing growth and mounting competition in the digital-payments market.

    What is the mounting competition? Does Paze factor into any of this?

    • adventured 15 minutes ago

      FedNow is what has PayPal's former investors so terrified (so much so that investors don't even think PayPal warrants a double digit multiple).

      No cost instant financial transfers between US financial users is coming over the next decade. The Fed has 1,400 banks onboard so far, up from 900 the prior year (that's 1,400 in two years). Half of PayPal's business goes away over the coming decade.

  • Ancalagon an hour ago

    cool, more market consolidation

    • whynotmaybe an hour ago

      You have it backwards, great opportunity to start a niche competitor for whatever feature they'll remove once the acquisition is done!

  • nodesocket 2 hours ago

    When’s the last time a private company acquired a public company? Crazy!

    • eli an hour ago

      Not all that different from Musk buying Twitter. Happens pretty often with private equity as a buyer.

    • rvz 9 minutes ago

      Mostly private equity companies do this.

      Bending Spoons bought Vimeo.

      Hellman & Friedman bought Zendesk.