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Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

reuters.com

51–60 of 333 posts

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#51
post #34

PayPal user for 20+ years and it is time to end that dross

Nah, I hate them with a passion as a merchant but I absolutely love them as a buyer and customer. There is a reason why after all these years and other solutions they're still everywhere, and it's not because of their great tooling, their low fees or their awesome support for merchant. It's not because of market lock in either, at least here in Europe they're merely a middle man between my credit card or sepa bank ac…

Nah I thought I liked PayPal as a customer until I found out that they favor large merchants against the consumer. I had a problem with a product and the company was playing games with the warranty. I only had it for 3 months and it was already falling apart. I made a complaint with PP and it was auto denied.

I will never use PP for a large purchase again.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#53
post #43

Why, what is the play here? I know PayPal is used extensively in some countries (like Brazil?) but in most countries there are other/local services that have substantial market share and I do not think that PayPal can compete.

Interesting that you'd mention Brazil. I consider it one of the very few examples of countries successfully replacing PayPal with a publicly owned service. Pix is ubiquitous in Brazil and has been for years. It has not only displaced PayPal but also cash and (in large parts) Visa/MasterCard, even in the face of US tariff threats.

It's actually pretty common for local payment systems to exist, it's not just Brazil. I've seen such systems in Europe, Asia, Africa and I'm sure they exist in other places I've never been to

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#54
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not tried Wero, but I have tried the german predecessor (paydirekt/giropay). It was ... not much less smooth than PayPal. But I’ve only ever seen a single vendor offering it. 0 for Wero so far.

Wero is essentially iDeal. iDeal is great.

Great for merchants, not so much for consumers. Once the merchant has your money it's very difficult to get it back if things go wrong.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#55
post #34

PayPal user for 20+ years and it is time to end that dross

Nah, I hate them with a passion as a merchant but I absolutely love them as a buyer and customer. There is a reason why after all these years and other solutions they're still everywhere, and it's not because of their great tooling, their low fees or their awesome support for merchant. It's not because of market lock in either, at least here in Europe they're merely a middle man between my credit card or sepa bank ac…

I don't trust either one.

And as a consumer, I especially hate PayPal because they always try to screw me with their currency conversion rates by hiding the toggle button (and it happens that I sometimes forget to toggle over to my bank's currency conversion)

And only once have I ever won a payment dispute there (and that was as a merchant, not a buyer... lol)

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#56
post #3

That would be quite a play. Stripe, PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, Xoom all under one umbrella. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for online card-not-present (CNP) checkout on that is going to be absurdly high and this will take a lot of convincing to beat antitrust. They will probably have to unwind Venmo and Braintree.

Convince who? There is no such thing as antitrust anymore in the USA, it’s merely the size of the bribe required to let the merger go through now

Quite true. Or honestly, it's really barely about direct financial bribery anymore[1] - all the recent ones have just hinged on incredibly naïve (and easily manipulable) readings of how a merger might affect culture war / red vs blue partisanship.

For instance, CNN really doesn't matter, and was a tiny part of WB/Discovery, but of course Trump cares deeply about (hating) CNN, so all that was needed to win over Trump and guarantee his approval was for the acquirer to whisper to him that they'd do a housecleaning there. This lifehack would work for acquiring any company that happens to control any media property that hasn't established itself as a Trump cheerleader.

Note: I'm not even a Democrat today, but the pure and petty corruption on display definitely sickens me.

[1] though, back when it was, the bribes were astoundingly high ROI due to how cheap they were!

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#57
post #36
post #26

I really do not grasp business when PayPal is somehow worth over $50 Billion It doesn't have assets? It's not a bank Is it because PayPal is integrated already into so many websites? Wouldn't it take decades to make back $50 Billion in fees?

If you look at their financials, they’re clearly making money. In 2025 they had 33B in revenue with a net income of 5.2B

PayPal is sort of the Facebook of digital payments: they stopped being directly relevant years ago, but own many of the things that you or someone you know continue to use. Venmo being the obvious one, but also Braintree, Xoom, Honey, Bill Me Later, etc.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#58
post #34

PayPal user for 20+ years and it is time to end that dross

Nah, I hate them with a passion as a merchant but I absolutely love them as a buyer and customer. There is a reason why after all these years and other solutions they're still everywhere, and it's not because of their great tooling, their low fees or their awesome support for merchant. It's not because of market lock in either, at least here in Europe they're merely a middle man between my credit card or sepa bank ac…

Yeah, any subscription I can push through PayPal, I do so, because I can cancel it directly on their end. I don't need to go through a ten click justification process with the merchant.

Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

#60
post #26

I really do not grasp business when PayPal is somehow worth over $50 Billion It doesn't have assets? It's not a bank Is it because PayPal is integrated already into so many websites? Wouldn't it take decades to make back $50 Billion in fees?

Doesn't PayPal confiscate your money if you forget to withdraw it in time?
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