Payments giant Stripe has offered to buy PayPal (PYPL) in a deal worth $53 billion, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.
San Francisco-based Stripe made the $60.50 per share offer along with private equity firm Advent International, according to the report, which cited two people familiar with the matter.
The offer represents a premium of about 28% over PayPal’s closing price of $47.37 on Tuesday. Shares of the New York-listed payments provider have risen more than 18% to $56.10 in premarket trading.
The offer follows a previous expression of interest, although PayPal has been reluctant to accept the offer until now, the Financial Times said.
Neither PayPal, Stripe nor Advent immediately responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Stripe and PayPal are among the most prominent financial companies incorporating stablecoins into traditional payment mechanisms. Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to the value of a traditional financial asset, typically a fiat currency.
PayPal’s stablecoin, PYUSD, is the eighth largest in the sector with a market capitalization of $185 million, according to data from CoinGecko. The industry is dominated by Tether’s USDT with $184 billion.
Stripe’s historic focus was on incorporating the second-largest stablecoin, Circle Internet’s USDC, into its payments infrastructure.
It has recently moved towards offering stablecoins and other blockchain-based services more independently, developing with its own mainnet, Tempo. The company also joined the Open USD venture along with Mastercard, Visa and BlackRock to develop a new stablecoin, which could pose a serious challenge to USDC.
