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