The news: Stripe is reportedly interested in buying all or parts of PayPal, per Bloomberg, after its stock has fallen roughly in half in the last year. 

The company has also reportedly received interest from other parties.

According to the report, buyer interest is still in early stages, and a deal may not materialize.

How we got here: In 2024, PayPal initiated its “transition year” strategy, with a key goal of boosting branded checkout volume YoY. 

But by Q4 2025 earnings, TPV growth had fallen in half since Q1 2024, and branded checkout growth slowed to just 1% YoY. CEO Alex Chriss, who spearheaded the strategy, was removed and replaced with HP CEO Enrique Lopez.

Potential buyers: Stripe is the first name to materialize out of these conversations, but it’s not the only potential candidate. While a private equity firm could be a buyer, given PayPal’s clean balance sheet, a complete or partial purchase of PayPal by a fellow member of the payments ecosystem holds significant possibility.

Here are the types of payments players that might be interested:

• Payment processors. A payment processor like Stripe could be interested in all of PayPal. While it does possess Link, acquiring PayPal would usher in a more robust wallet technology for consumers, establishing a dual-sided network for Stripe. It would also gain Venmo, one of the US' most well-known P2P networks. Perhaps even more importantly, PayPal has struck multiple strategic partnerships to solidify its network position within agentic commerce. As Stripe deepens its own agentic ambitions, buying PayPal would deliver these strategic positions.
• P2P providers. A player like Block could fortify its dual-sided network by absorbing PayPal’s apparatus. Integrating PayPal and Venmo into Cash App could boost Block’s P2P app to more universal prominence, pushing it outside of its current young and lower-income core user groups.
• Issuers. Issuers like JPMorgan and American Express are trying to grab millennial and Gen Z spending volume with Platinum and Apple card products. Buying Venmo could give these issuers relationships with a predominantly young cardholder base and eliminate the disintermediation threat from PayPal’s lending and savings products, especially in light of PayPal’s recent industrial bank license request. Scoring Braintree could also solidify a bank’s enterprise payment processing capabilities.
• A digital wallet. The banking consortium behind Early Warning System’s Paze (and more popularly Zelle) could receive a shot in the arm with PayPal’s digital wallet absorbed into its system, bringing over needed customers to the underused wallet.
• A super app attempt. A company like Elon Musk’s X could attempt to buy PayPal to get its long-stalled payments product off the ground, especially as it tries to achieve super app status stateside. Musk certainly has experience with PayPal; he was CEO in 2000 when it was called—you guessed it—X.com. 

Implications for payment providers: If PayPal is absorbed by Stripe or another payments-related buyer, other payment platforms need to act defensively. 

Stripe’s takeover of PayPal’s critical agentic protocol partnerships would help the fintech capture greater standard-setting power—and swing the pendulum of payments power away from incumbents for agentic commerce.