Stripe, valued near $159 billion, would gain PayPal's 439 million active accounts and Braintree's merchant footprint, creating a combined $3 trillion payment platform. CEO Enrique Lores confirmed the board will objectively evaluate every opportunity as Q2 revenue hit $8.68 billion with non-GAAP EPS beating consensus at $1.38. The most widely read finance newsletter on Substack isn't published by a bank, it's Doomberg, where 383,000+ readers get the energy and macro analysis the mainstream press misses. 24/7 Wall St. readers save 17% on their first year here.
PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) shares jumped Friday after CNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos reported on-air that a Wall Street Journal story had recently been published detailing active sale discussions between PayPal and a consortium led by private fintech rival Stripe and private equity firm Advent International. Sigalos framed PayPal's share price move as driven by deal speculation: "Those shares are popping on a Wall Street Journal story saying that the fintech firm is in talks to sell itself to a group that includes Stripe and then private equity firm Advent International." She reminded viewers of the backstory: "It was just a few weeks ago that the PayPal board weighed a bid by Stripe and Advent when they proposed paying $60.50 a share for PayPal, a price that the PayPal board viewed as insufficient at the time, according to some of the sources speaking to the Journal." PayPal closed Friday's trading session at $61.66, up 1.77% on the day, 4.38% on the week, and 11.06% over the past month. PayPal currently trades at just 11.1x next year's expected earnings and 9.1x expected FCF.
The stock still trades below its 52-week high of $78.53, and shares remain down 77.38% over five years. Analysts have an average price target of $58.83, implying they think the company is just about fairly valued today with a market cap of $52.7 billion. Before Doomberg published a word, its team spent long careers in heavy industry, private equity, and the hard sciences.
They take no advertisers and serve no institution — which is why their lateral-thinking coverage of energy, finance, and geopolitics reads nothing like consensus financial media. Doomberg has set aside a discounted rate exclusively for 24/7 Wall St. readers — it isn't available on their main page. Prediction markets moved in step with the report.
Polymarket's "Will Stripe acquire PayPal in 2026?" contract jumped from an 18.3% implied probability on August 14 to 38.1% on August 15. A parallel market on Stripe acquiring "any part" of PayPal sits at 66.5%, suggesting traders view a partial carve-out (think Braintree or Hyperwallet) as more probable than a full takeout. On PayPal's Q2 earnings call, new CEO Enrique Lores addressed the acquisition speculation head-on: "As a matter of policy, we don't comment on market speculation or potential M&A discussion.
As a board and management team, our responsibility is to maximize long-term shareholder value." He added that the board is "open and has a clear responsibility to objectively evaluate every opportunity that is presented to us, compare it with our own plan, and choose the option that creates more value." This implies management is leaving the door open to more favorable acquisition offers. Q2 2026 revenue came in at $8.68 billion, up 4.8% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $1.38 beating the $1.28 consensus. Total payment volume rose 10% to $486.45 billion.
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