Payments giant Stripe has offered to buy PayPal (PYPL) in a deal worth $53 billion, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
San Francisco-based Stripe made the offer at $60.50 per share in tandem 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% to PayPal’s closing price of $47.37 on Tuesday. Shares of the New York-listed payments provider jumped more than 18% to $56.10 in pre-market trading.
The offer follows an earlier expression of interest, although PayPal has so far been reluctant to participate in the bid, the FT said.
Neither PayPal, Stripe nor Advent immediately responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Stripe and PayPal are among the most prominent consumer financial companies bringing stablecoins to traditional payment mechanisms. Stablecoins are digital tokens tied to the value of a traditional financial asset, typically fiat currency.
PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin is the eighth largest in the industry with a market cap of $185 million, according to CoinGecko data. The industry is dominated by Tether’s USDT, which is worth $184 billion.
Stripe’s historical goal has been to integrate the second largest stablecoin, Circle Internet’s USDC, into its payments infrastructure.
It has recently evolved into a more independent offering of stablecoin and other blockchain-based services, expanding with its own mainnet, Tempo. The company also joined the Open USD venture alongside Mastercard, Visa and BlackRock to develop a new stablecoin, which could pose a serious challenge to USDC.
