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Stripe said to abandon $50B pursuit of PayPal
https://archive.ph/qdE54 https://archive.ph/qdE54
- rekttrader 1mo agoDiligence told them they’re buying a almost dead payment processor with ancient tech. Customer lists are worth something but not that much.
- enos_feedler 1mo agoElon bought a dead social network and look at him go! But seriously, I log into paypal once a month to pay my landlord. I am a MAU. That is crazy. It’s more then I can say for ABNB. Maybe they should buy Paypal. Save on those transaction fees.
- darth_avocado 1mo agoThe social network is more dead than when he bought it. Wouldn’t need the an acquisition first by an ai company and then a space company to hide its worth.
- SllX 1mo agoI wish Twitter had been dead when Elon bought it, but no, Twitter was far from dead. X actually has fewer MAU as far as I can tell[1], and I wouldn’t call it dead either. [1]: Seriously though, I can’t find good data I trust on this so correct me if you’ve got a good source saying otherwise, or even if someone has something substantiating this better I would take that too.
- pjc50 1mo agoWhy can't you pay the landlord by standing order?
- sho_hn 1mo agoCurious to hear from someone who watches this space. What makes them dead? It's still the only consistently supported thing I encounter online. I'm aware things like Wero are poised to shake things up, but still have no real idea about timeline and impact.
- nostrebored 1mo agoMaybe we’re doing different things or in different regions, but I rarely see pay with PayPal now.
- anonzzzies 1mo agoLuckily I haven't for years now. But might indeed be different regions.
- qingcharles 1mo agoI see it absolutely everywhere still. We all exist in our own bubbles.
- mjrbrennan 1mo agoYes it's basically every website in Australia you can pay via PayPal now. I use it less and less since Apple Pay is available pretty much everywhere, but it can still be handy now and then.
- bokkies 1mo agoPopular in South Africa also and remains one of the very few credit card processors where you can bill in USD and remit in ZAR (no Stripe in SA)
- distances 1mo agoI see it all the time in Europe. Many German online shops have Paypal as the default payment method and may even process card payments through Paypal. Also, it's often the way people transfer money between each other.
- LoganDark 1mo agoI honestly wish they could've succeeded because PayPal is one of the banes of my existence. They're one of those faceless corporations that accuse everyone of money laundering in order to steal their shit.
- anonzzzies 1mo agoThey held and stole quite a bit of money from my company when it was small 'for fraud'; it was a very hard time, and of course there was no fraud. It was a long time ago and I don't get angry anymore, but it was a nightmare and nothing you can do. Since then I moved to local processing, issuing, acquiring; I can thank Paypal for all of that. Hope they die a miserable death, but I guess 50B$ says at least the managers will drive their lambo's/yachts around no matter what happens unfortunately.
- inigyou 1mo agoOf course you can do something. You can sue PayPal.
- anonzzzies 1mo agoSuing over borders. Did I mention small company? What would it cost me, in 2007, to sue a US company from my country in europe? With what chance of winning?
- inigyou 1mo agoThey're actually a European company, or else they can't operate there. The European company is probably a subsidiary of an American one.
- anonzzzies 1mo agoStill not in my own country; I see they were in the UK back then; suing over borders inside the EU is still expensive and pretty much advised against unless it's a lot of money. It was for us, but not compared to this effort; anyway ; it was advised against back then. Maybe now it's easier.
- inigyou 1mo agoPayPal is still the default processor in so many places. That's got to be worth something. Every other time I buy something online, PayPal is the default option.
- SXX 1mo agoWhat country are you living in?
- AlotOfReading 1mo agoI see it everywhere in the US.
- meerita 1mo agoMost of the banks around the world are still running on old tech. Not so long ago I remember one was still using Cobol.
- cbdumas 1mo agoCan folks responding to this comment claiming that they see PayPal a lot provide some details? Country, industry, sector, something. I'm in the US and I basically never see it on e commerce checkout flows any more (and good riddance IMO).
- kevin_thibedeau 1mo agoIt is still common on small e-commerce sites. The ones at high risk of being hacked where you don't want them to have your card details.
- domh 1mo agoYeah this is my primary use case for using PayPal. I use it on e-commerce sites for first purchase or if it's unlikely I'm going to buy anything from the same site again.
- jen729w 1mo agoI run an online store selling e-stuff. I offer Stripe by default, and a 'use PayPal' link on the side. It accounts for about 20% of my sales. I was about to write 'overwhelmingly Europeans' and I thought I better check. Nope. Row Labels Count of Country ---------- ---------------- United States 54 Germany 12 Australia 10 United Kingdom 7 Netherlands 7
- csomar 1mo agoI don't see it as much as before but recently I had issues with paying z.ai with my card and the only payment alternative they have is PayPal. PayPal now requires an account with a verified phone number just to process your payment, so it's strictly a no-go for me. I am guessing the millions of people they have on-boarded in the last decades are what makes the business worth something.
- Steve44 1mo agoI'm in the UK and I use it a few times a month. Generally I would use it on smaller / unfamiliar websites; I may be more hesitant about entering my credit card numbers but also it's quicker and easier as I can do it without getting my card out of my bag. I also use it exclusively for eBay purchases.
- ChrisArchitect 1mo ago6 months ago: Stripe reportedly makes offer to acquire PayPal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47144064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47144064 1 month ago: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48915953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48915953
- allears 1mo agoStripe is tiny compared to Paypal, and the dodgy Stripe CEO was trying to do some wildly creative financing and work the social media memes in an effort to pull this transaction off. Wall St. basically thought it was stupid and wouldn't support it. Glad he finally gave up -- he certainly got his money's worth of free publicity out of it.
- jey 1mo agoNone of this makes sense or is supported by the facts. Stripe is reportedly valued at $159B, PayPal's market cap is currently $52.59B, and your claims about memes and Wall St are asserted without any citations or facts.
- jmtulloss 1mo ago[disclaimer: I used to work at stripe] I agree with you in principle but I don't think that market cap is the right metric. Market cap captures a lot of assumptions around product mix and growth rates that have been in Stripe's favor for a long time. The most apples-to-apples comparison is just looking at payments volume and ignoring all their other products. In that case, Stripe just recently overtook PayPal! PayPal is enormous! But Stripe has that compounding growth on its side and GP's argument has become outdated in a short amount of time. This is ignoring the bit about pc which I just disagree with.
- KaiserPro 1mo ago> Stripe is reportedly valued at $159B But that value is not tested or backed by the wider market. Market cap of paypal is. Also having just spaffed "$8bn" on openrouter, I would be surprised that they have enough resources to get the ~$50bn to buy paypal. Much less the work it would take to integrate a much larger company in to the "stripe" way
- Synthetic7346 1mo agoThey also bought bridge last year, and Clerky just now
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- ocd 1mo agoI've been wondering about this since it came up in my newsreader that they wanted to acquire PayPal. Seemed like odd timing to me given PayPal has been questionable but necessary in a lot of cases for online businesses in international payments. In Canada, we use Interac for more ordinary payments between ourselves, and the usual credit cards through card processors like Moneris or bank provided services in physical stores. I can imagine fewer uses for PayPal as time goes on, especially with the accelerated change driven by geopolitics. Visa and Mastercard may be at risk internationally for other countries seeking to keep payment processing entirely in their own yard. This matter in particular made me wonder how things will go for Stripe going forward with these policy changes that may impact credit cards. I'd love to delete my PayPal account and never log in again, but the use case for me right now is mostly that companies (outside Canada, and outside NA in most cases) usually only accept payment with PayPal.
- andrewmcwatters 1mo ago[dead]
- aghuang 1mo agoThought this would happen and would work out. Must have been a disagreement on more than just the price. Only Stripe knows.
- funlang 1mo ago[flagged]
- diogenescynic 1mo agoPayPal is dying and not that slowly. It's being replaced by Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Apple Pay, Google Pay... etc. margins continue to decrease with no real moat to rising competition. Eventually it will just be Venmo and Braintree left and PayPal will be a company like Western Union that people used to need, but now is mostly used by scammers... They completely squandered their spin off from eBay and acquired terrible companies along the way that didn't pan out really even one time. I wouldn't pay $25B for them. You're buying a depreciating asset.
- tyre 1mo agoMakes sense: > The takeover interest has helped it recover, with PayPal shares jumping more than 40% this quarter to give the company a market value of about $52.6 billion. Seems like they tried to buy a struggling company and leaks of the talks made it too expensive.
- johnwheeler 1mo agoIt's not a struggling company. I run an e-commerce website. I give people the option to use either Stripe or PayPal. I would say it's a 50 50 split. The company is making $5 billion in profit a year. What's wrong with people?
- shevy-java 1mo agoThis is kind of at odds with other reports.
- weiran 1mo ago> What’s wrong with people? Confirmation bias.
- altmanaltman 1mo agoYeah the "struggling company" is a bit too harsh of a statement. What they likely were talking about was the stock price. It was getting hit pretty hard and the Stripe deal talks saw confidence which led to the stock price getting back up and now the market value for the company is actually higher than what Stripe is offering in the deal so it doesn't make sense to sell lower at this point of time.
- cubefox 1mo agoNone of that is remotely evidence that "struggling company" is merely "a bit too harsh".
- wongarsu 1mo agoIf I have a credit card, as a consumer Stripe and PayPal are about equal. Both let me pay with my card without making an account. Both will lightly nag me to make one, with the difference that Stripe Link is very light-weight and Paypal is a lot more heavy-weight. But in return Paypal allows more payment methods (direct debit from your bank account being a big pull here in Germany) and makes it possible to send money between friends. Also lots of people 30+ (which is the vast majority of the population) have paypal accounts from the "don't give random websites your credit card, give it to this one trustworthy website instead"-era. If there weren't so many people hating PayPal, I'd expect a straight Stripe/Paypal choice to lean much more towards paypal, not a 50-50 split
- acd 1mo agoThere is us fair competition law Sherman anti trust act laws. "is a United States antitrust law which prescribes the rule of free competition among those engaged in commerce and consequently prohibits unfair monopolies" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
- exe34 1mo ago"pursuit" reminds me of mortal engines. But then I think the book was a comment on capitalism strip mining the earth anyway.
- wkoszek 1mo agoPayPal might still be the sweetheart, but there's no innovation I feel. With eBay having CC support and being able to charge and return a charge back to the card, PayPal now is in a niche. I'm helping a founder recruit. To handle the load of candidates, we give folks applying some $ for doing a small 1hr project, and Claude told me that PayPal may still be universal way of sending a "gift amounts". I often wonder how much work would it be to bring IBAN accounts to the US. The need for Zelle baffles me, and the fact that person A can't send $ to person B via normal bank infrastructure is interesting.
- mrdoe 1mo agoWait what? How are you then going to send someone money?! If not through the bank? What special USA feature is this?
- DarmokTanagra 1mo agoIts crazy, every time I am in the US and a group needs to split a bill its a absurd debate over which third party payments provider to use. I've even had people refuse cash because they want me to "venmo" them or whatever stupid app they prefer.
- groestl 1mo agoIsn't "split the bill" something that the restaurant does?
- chneu 1mo agoYes but a lot of people just use apps. It's weird. Americans are super weird about dining procedures and expectations. Remember, we tip here. It's weird.
- ricardobayes 1mo agoMost of Europe tips too, and increasingly there is a service charge too (at least in the UK it has become standard now).
- Computer0 1mo agoWe need to figure out how to make using stablecoins viable. Crypto still sucks to use for online purchases.
- ei8ths 29d agogas fees is what kills it
- iSloth 1mo agoSuch a shame they didn't do anything with Braintree years ago and just let it rot
- LoganDark 1mo agoBraintree has Discord as a customer, they don't need anyone else.
- charcircuit 1mo agoSo what happens when Discord switches?
- LoganDark 1mo agoDunno. Odds are Braintree will do anything they could need.
- herbst 1mo agoI remember when it came out they promised crypto payments and what not and then it never actually delivered anything else than being another confusing option to use PayPal
- stefandesu 1mo agoI've deleted my PayPal account last year and haven't regretted it. Admittedly it helped a lot that I live in Norway now where everyone uses Vipps (which is so much better), and PayPal is not a thing at all.
- sigmoid10 1mo agoDo you never order stuff online from outside of scandinavia? I've used it extensively for over a decade with zero issues and still find it the best payment method for online shopping if you are a consumer. You only need an email to send money everywhere in the world and almost everyone supports it. No need to hand out your actual credit card or banking info to random websites with questionable security. And if you do get scammed, it's trivial to get your money back. So I totally understand some small merchants who don't want to receive from papal, but I don't understand why a consumer would not want it.
- freehorse 1mo agoNorway is not a Baltic country. And I rarely encounter PayPal as the only option when ordering from eu anymore in general.
- sigmoid10 1mo agoI meant scandinavia.
- shevy-java 1mo agoWell, baltics have access to the EU; Norway only in a limited manner. I noticed this when someone wanted to purchase magic cards and when I looked at the extra bureaucracy I decided to do something else with my time. (Note: this may not have been mega-fair to the customer in Norway, but at that time I did not yet know how insane the EU rules are, they are just a mega-hassle. Since then I simply give notice that I avoid shipping into Norway, Switzerland etc...; and the fault for this really lies in the EU, they make so many trivial things needlessly complicated.) Other than that, often you will then rely on in-between traders.
- sathana 1mo ago[flagged]
- sathana 1mo ago[flagged]
- shevy-java 1mo agoI wonder if this year we see more acquisitions, by volume in money, than in prior years. I never got into PayPal and these days I shy away from any Trump-tainted US companies - which basically means I don't want my money to go into US companies. Canada showed the way here.
- c16 1mo agoI like to think Stripe put $50B in a paypal account, and they got locked out with no way to get it back.
- Hoasi 1mo agoHaha, classic, sounds almost plausible, as anyone using PayPal painfully knows.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- reenorap 1mo agoIf this is true, the CEO needs to be fired immediately by the Board and negotiations need to be resumed. Paypal has no future, getting 60B would have been a gift to them.
- LightBug1 1mo agoHow on earth is a dogshit company like Paypal worth $50bn? Particularly to such a vastly more sophisticated company like Stripe?
- analog31 1mo agoWho uses PayPal any more? I do. I have a side business that makes a gadget, akin to a guitar pedal. It has worked flawlessly for me, for well over a decade. Occasionally I casually search for an alternative (to have a backup) but have never found one. PP lets me accept payments from a completely passive website. No code! While I love coding, maintaining an active web page is a cost. My IT costs are zero. I think PP's buyer protections help my business too, by letting people feel confident that they can cancel a deal, and that I don't get any of their personal information except their shipping address. I don't want that information, and I don't want to be responsible for keeping it secure.
- ekabod 1mo agoIn France, most online shops offer Paypal and I use it all the time.
- scrapcode 1mo agoI absolutely drop quite a bit of guard if PP G&S is an option. A lot of that being because I have been on the other side (seller, selling digital goods such as dev and design) and have seen how quick PP is to yank those funds back. Is that a good thing, or is it crazy that such a simple concept (if consumer claims they don't get a product, you provide proof of delivery or we take the money back) has been almost unique to PP for so long?
- jmathai 1mo agoI'm a customer of Stripe. But I prefer to pay using these in order - Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, Stripe, enter card into site. The Stripe interface with Link and whatnot is slick but it feels like I'm giving my credit card over to the merchant even though I know I'm not.
- adrianwaj 1mo agoYep, attempted signing up to Claude recently, wanted cc number, name and address directly on site. No paypal. Wow. In the end my card was rejected and I couldn't even sign up. Wow++. Increasingly, I'm seeing crypto as the best thing long-term. No one's going to deny me service based on who I am and where I live (or could be living,) let alone giving that info over to third parties unnecessarily. No false positives leading to rejection either based on that information which shouldn't even be asked for. Identity should be a choice, not a requirement or a coercion. Like this, even bitcoin enables a high degree of anonymity. What's with this whole "Billing Address" bull^^^^? No one needs to know that when I buy something with cash at a supermarket or use a credit card at a gas station. If someone wants to know exactly who I am and where I am (or could be) then there should be a card for that which will co-exist with the crypto. Does PayPal provide names of buyers to sellers? Also, a buyer's protection thing could exist as some type of adjunct escrow service for sellers to use. Good read here: https://www.benzinga.com/crypto/cryptocurrency/26/07/60269744/bitcoin-can-help-to-protect-the-fruit-of-your-work-says-ledger-co-founder https://www.benzinga.com/crypto/cryptocurrency/26/07/6026974... "He warned investors never to share their 24-word recovery phrase and said large holders should avoid keeping direct access to their full holdings at home." That's the last thing that should be solved. Remove the temptation for crime.
- ramijames 1mo agoI can't imagine how potentially bad the codebase for PayPal must be.