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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

#141

Post by arcticbull »

root_axis wrote: post #122
edoceo wrote: post #97

Not good. Stripe makes restrictions that PayPal allows (cannabis adjacent, adult adjacent) that Stripe blocks. Many vendors will be negatively impacted by Stripes morality police and selective application of their policies.

Why do people think this? Since when do giant corporations care about morals? As usual, everything is about money. You can be sure that part of the interest in a paypal acquisition is paypal's consumer wallet product which allows them to extend into lines of business that are currently constrained by Stripe's model.

It's pretty easy, you get hit with a surcharge on your other transaction volume if you allow something that V/MC don't want you to allow, and if you keep doing it you could get cut off which effectively makes you irrelevant to many of your customers.

As others have said, it's about perceived brand risk (V/MC allowed X terrible transaction to take place) and regulatory risk.

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

#142

Post by thephyber »

root_axis wrote: post #122
edoceo wrote: post #97

Not good. Stripe makes restrictions that PayPal allows (cannabis adjacent, adult adjacent) that Stripe blocks. Many vendors will be negatively impacted by Stripes morality police and selective application of their policies.

Why do people think this? Since when do giant corporations care about morals? As usual, everything is about money. You can be sure that part of the interest in a paypal acquisition is paypal's consumer wallet product which allows them to extend into lines of business that are currently constrained by Stripe's model.

There are many bank and bank-adjacent companies who contractually enforce morals standards. It doesn't matter if the underlying reason for the morality is profit maximization, the effect is the same.

You seem to care more about the aesthetics of the sentence than the meaning behind it. We know that a company is not a person. It doesn't have a consciousness. It doesn't have a singular morality to work with. It borrows the decision making of its employees and contractors. We know that the "morality" of a bank or credit card company is really just a layer of abstraction for a group of decisions it makes to avoid bad press/sentiment/oversight/regulation. But if you analyze why people have morality, it's not that different; there are LOTS of things people would do that they currently don't if there was no underlying consequence.

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

#143

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #20

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

Let me know where I can get PayPal's micropayment rates for the 80%+ of transactions (below US$12) that support ardour.org ...

We save almost US$0.25 per $1 transaction because of PayPal.

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

#144

Post by eek2121 »

stavros wrote: post #100
bdcravens wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of the big rules of commerce is that competing on price is generally a no-no for large markets. Usually, the powers that be would rather compete on a perceived value; that is how “informal price collusion” works.

Price/cost is the last thing you compete on unless you have a wholesale advantage, which nobody in this particular industry does (visa/mastercard set core rates)

Source: I’ve worked with higher ups in numerous commerce operations.

Commerce is actually even worse than many realize. Look up pepsi and walmart as a small example.

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

#145

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

quantummagic wrote: post #74
nolok wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ... because buyers trust it. I did until October 2022, when PayPal published an update to its Acceptable Use Policy that threatened to fine users $2,500 for promoting "misinformation". Like they were the arbiters of what is misinformation and worthy of economic penalty. While it was later rescinded, it was beyond the pale. It's proof that something is corrupt and completely out to lunch in their management, and I w…

> People are worried about authoritarianism, yet meekly cede such powers to a corporation? It boggles the mind.

The libertarian answer is that corporations cannot threaten your freedom because you always have a choice of whether to deal with them or not.

The libertarian answer is also mostly bullshit, but there is a kernel of a seed of a nugget of truth in there somehow.

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

#146

Post by mschuster91 »

pc86 wrote: post #87
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you have any evidence that you can just bribe your way past antitrust regulations (which are enforced by hundreds or maybe even thousands of attorneys across the political spectrum) or is this just how you feel because you don't like who is in the White House right now?

> Do you have any evidence that you can just bribe your way past antitrust regulations

Well... we certainly know that preemptive appeasement is a thing [1]. IMHO, this is equivalent to a bribe - a favor, just not in monetary form.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/sep/26/kimmel-controv...

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

#147

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

reddalo wrote: post #140
brikym wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a cartel it's at the Visa & Mastercard layer surely.

I can't wait for Europe to come up with an alternative for Visa & Mastercard. European business pay a "hidden" tax to the US on everything, in the form of Visa & Mastercard commissions.

Which (a) the EU can and does regulate (b) the majority of the commission goes to the issuing bank.

I hate feeling as if I'm defending Visa or Mastercard, but if we're going to attack them, let's get our storytelling correct first.

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

#148

Post by thephyber »

decimalenough wrote: post #126
root_axis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people think this? Since when do giant corporations care about morals? As usual, everything is about money. You can be sure that part of the interest in a paypal acquisition is paypal's consumer wallet product which allows them to extend into lines of business that are currently constrained by Stripe's model.

It's not about morals, it's about regulatory heat and risk. Cannabis in the US remains illegal on the federal level, and the chargeback rates on adult services are through the roof.

It's not only about morals.

No, chargeback rates are not the only reason banking companies like Mastercard are dubious about adult content. In 2021 they added contractual terms to ensure that adult content uses age verification, has the consent of the participants, and to remove illegal content before it is published at soon after it is reported.

But also, the financial industry has a history of discriminating against their customers based in moral reasons (or at minimum bowing to regulatory pressure which stemmed from upstream morality decisions).[1]

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa8xy9/is-the-doj-forcing-ba...

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

#149

Post by ksec »

Paypal was worth near $50 when it IPO again in 2015, and it is still worth $50B today?

And this isn't some inflated market cap either, apart from 2021 and 2022 they have been making $5B+ Net income in the past 6 years. I would love to dive into how Paypal makes money because that is an order of magnitude bigger than I thought. There must be some market in which Paypal is popular and culturally accepted as by default payment.

Which also makes me want to rethink how much Apple Pay is worth if it was a separate business.

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

#150

Post by dqv »

gamblor956 wrote: post #85
dqv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Paypal isn't the right place for warranty disputes. They're not in the wrong there. If you want purchase protection you need to use a card that offers it.

A product advertised as having a 1 year warranty and then the seller not honoring the warranty is the product not being sold as described.

But yes, it's my mistake for assuming the purchase protection would... protect my purchase.

And now I won't make that mistake again. The value isn't there, neither with their aggregation service nor their credit product.

I can just use Google Pay with a credit card, both of which are more convenient and offer better protection than PayPal does respectively.

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