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

reuters.com

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

#91

Post by coredev_ »

rglover wrote: post #37
coredev_ wrote: post #31

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.

Consolidation (move toward making Stripe the only game in town).

PayPal seems to me like something from the past that no one uses. But sure, they have a market and a profit, but a future?

Will Stripe move customers from PayPal to Stripe or will they fix PayPal?

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

#92

Post by Jblx2 »

dlcarrier wrote: post #12
digitaltrees wrote: post #2

Trying to create a monopoly before the lack of antitrust enforcement window closes.

In the US, PayPal has nowhere near the adoption of other countries, for making payments directly between accounts, and Visa and Mastercard have enough regulatory capture to ensure it stays that way. If there wasn't a regulation-ensured duopoly, everyone would be switching to RTP or FedNow which each charge 4.5¢ per transaction, without an additional commission.

>FedNow

There is no recourse if something goes wrong with FedNow, right? Like you get scammed, and the scammer just keeps the money. Seems like a pretty big difference (in theory anyway) to PayPal. Although I'm apparently not the right guy to ask, since I really don't see the use case for PayPal vs. credit card.

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

#93

Post by pessimizer »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4
digitaltrees wrote: post #2

Trying to create a monopoly before the lack of antitrust enforcement window closes.

No reason it can’t be broken apart in the future. States will likely file suit, as twelve already have regarding the Paramount Warner deal.

You mean that Paramount-Warner deal that people waited and let happen so they could break it up in the future?

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

#94

Post by bdcravens »

paytonjjones wrote: post #86
nickjj wrote: post #65

I'm not sure I like this idea. Braintree is a legit competitor to Stripe. I'm guessing they have some informal agreement to keep transaction fees about the same but if they become 1 company, what's to stop Stripe from raising fees even more? I'm not a fan of either to be honest, PayPal once told me I was wrong with something related to taxes and a bunch of different reps told me what I was saying and reported was imp…

> informal agreement to keep transaction fees about the same This would be like, ridiculously illegal. It's also not practical; if you can steal customers, the incentive to undercut is very strong.

Of course, but that's the thing about "informal" agreements: presumably there's no record of it. Price collusion happens way more than most realize. I was at a trade show for my employer when a competitor walked up to our booth and out loud proposed that we should all fix our prices. We didn't of course, but the brazenness of saying something like that out in the open like was what surprised me.

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

#95

Post by geden »

novia wrote: post #82
nickjj wrote: post #65

I'm not sure I like this idea. Braintree is a legit competitor to Stripe. I'm guessing they have some informal agreement to keep transaction fees about the same but if they become 1 company, what's to stop Stripe from raising fees even more? I'm not a fan of either to be honest, PayPal once told me I was wrong with something related to taxes and a bunch of different reps told me what I was saying and reported was imp…

Paypal offshored all of their support staff.

They've been abysmal and borderline criminal since the start.

They randomly withheld £20k from a business I was involved with for no stated reason and no direct means to talk to a human about it. It took months to resolve.

And as for their actual website...

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

#96

Post by dabinat »

nolok wrote: post #34
charlieyu1 wrote: post #20

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…

The advantage that PayPal offers me as a buyer is a middleman between the vendor and myself that I control. The vendor does not get any of my card or bank info, and if it’s a subscription I can easily cancel it at any time on the PayPal side without having to go through whatever dark patterns the vendor might have to prevent you unsubscribing.

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

#98

Post by ergocoder »

nickjj wrote: post #66
ergocoder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Stripe is anywhere near the monopoly status.

Back when selling online tech courses was viable (pre-AI), about 30% of transactions in the US were from folks using PayPal on the platform I used. There's a huge of people who use PayPal, it's even more outside of the US.

It's the same argument why Google isn't never considered a monopoly to the online ads space. Because the whole ads industry is much larger.

Same thing with card payments. There are online card payments and in-store card payments and other kinds of payments. Stripe + Paypal volume is considered a fraction of it.

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

#99

Post by toomuchtodo »

pessimizer wrote: post #93
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reason it can’t be broken apart in the future. States will likely file suit, as twelve already have regarding the Paramount Warner deal.

You mean that Paramount-Warner deal that people waited and let happen so they could break it up in the future?

The deal that a low regulatory executive administration is supporting, while states attempt to prevent it (acting in place of what one would expect from an appropriately functioning Dept of Justice and FTC) until regime change. Midterms are approaching, and this admin has a bit more than two years left. Some folks involved are either at, or beyond, human life expectancy as well. Sort of but not quite similar to Brexit, which barely eeked by, and now all of the old pensioners who supported it are dead after a decade and the country is ready to consider getting back into the EU.

TLDR This low regulatory period of the US political timeline will eventually end, and there will be a lookback/clawback period. Nothing is permanent. Rules can be changed at any time.

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

#100

Post by stavros »

bdcravens wrote: post #94
paytonjjones wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> informal agreement to keep transaction fees about the same This would be like, ridiculously illegal. It's also not practical; if you can steal customers, the incentive to undercut is very strong.

Of course, but that's the thing about "informal" agreements: presumably there's no record of it. Price collusion happens way more than most realize. I was at a trade show for my employer when a competitor walked up to our booth and out loud proposed that we should all fix our prices. We didn't of course, but the brazenness of saying something like that out in the open like was what surprised me.

The good thing about price collusion is that it's hard to coordinate. If even one competitor defects (and they have every advantage to, as they'll win big), then the cartel falls apart.
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