From probing in February to hunting for $53 billion, PayPal (PYPL.US) refuses to become Stripe's "discount prey"! The battle for digital payment "full stack dominance" is heating up.

Media reports citing informed sources revealed that the board of directors of PayPal (PYPL.US), one of the world's largest digital payment service providers, believes that the $53 billion acquisition offer made by Stripe, a large financial technology infrastructure platform for businesses and developers, in partnership with private equity firm Advent International, undervalues the company and may face global antitrust regulatory and financing obstacles in the future. This latest statement from the board may pave the way for higher price negotiations regarding the fate of this American digital payment giant in the future. A spokesperson for PayPal and representatives have not yet issued a formal response to this proposal. According to media reports, the board of directors of PayPal is evaluating this offer, as well as the possibility of other offers, in conjunction with the management's business turnaround strategy. In February of this year, Stripe was reportedly considering acquiring all or part of PayPal's assets. In April, Stripe, Advent, and Block made initial contact with PayPal, with Block later withdrawing from the discussions. In July, Stripe and Advent officially submitted a joint offer to acquire PayPal at $60.50 per share, exceeding $53 billion in total value, representing a 28% premium on the stock price before the news was disclosed. The current status is still a negotiation game rather than a finalized deal: PayPal has not officially responded, and the board of directors preliminarily believes that the offer undervalues the potential value of the company after its successful transformation, while also questioning financing certainty, antitrust risks, and the lengthy process of completing the transaction. The bidders have obtained approximately $50 billion in financing support from JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, and have allocated $17 billion in equity capital. Stripe-Advent is currently the most serious buyer, but PayPal is still awaiting potential bidders. It is reported that many bidding institutions are considering PayPal's financial report on July 28 as a key recent milestone to determine whether the brand's checkout business can stabilize, thereby deciding on negotiation leverage. According to media reports citing informed sources, the initial view of PayPal's board of directors is that although the offer of $60.50 per share represents a premium over the company's recent stock price, it does not fully reflect the potential value that the company could create if the management successfully executes its large scale business transformation strategy in the coming years. As tech stocks in the US stock market face a sharp decline, PayPal's stock price rose 2% to $56.73 at the close on Thursday. The informed sources added that the board of directors of PayPal is considering many factors beyond price, including financing certainty, potential antitrust regulatory barriers, and the lengthy merger and acquisition process required to complete any transaction. The sources stated that the board plans to hold more meetings for further discussions. At the moment when the Stripe-Advent consortium made the acquisition offer, the American digital payment and digital wallet giant PayPal, founded in the late 1990s, has struggled to compete with strong digital payment rivals such as Apple Inc.'s Apple Pay and Google Pay, founded by Alphabet Inc. The management is making efforts to take transformation measures to boost its continuously declining stock price in the backdrop of slowing performance growth. What are the differences in the value chain hierarchy of the four major digital payment giants? Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay can all be classified as broad digital payment giants, but they occupy different positions in the specific value chain hierarchy. Stripe is essentially a financial infrastructure platform for businesses and developers: it provides payment acceptance, merchant acquiring, subscription billing, platform splitting, card issuing, fund transfer, AI anti-fraud capabilities through APIs, with core clients being merchants, software platforms, and internet companies. Its competitiveness lies in technology integration efficiency, payment success rates, and cross-border compliance capabilities, rather than a large consumer wallet account. One of Stripe's biggest competitors, PayPal, is a hybrid platform of "consumer account network + merchant payment processing": it owns consumer wallets like PayPal and Venmo, brand checkout buttons, and peer-to-peer transfer relationships, and also processes bank cards, digital wallets, and local payment methods for large merchants through Braintree. Therefore, it controls both consumer identity entry points and merchant back-end, with a much higher overlap in business compared to Apple Pay, Google Pay. Apple Pay and Google Pay are essentially digital wallets and identity authentication entry points at the device and operating system layer, rather than complete payment processing merchants. After users bind bank-issued credit or debit cards to their wallets, Apple relies on Secure Element, device tokens, and biometrics to complete secure authorization; Google Pay returns encrypted payment tokens to merchants, which are then handed over to Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, or bank acquirers for actual transaction processing and settlement. Similar to Google Pay, once Apple Pay completes the front-end process, it also needs to pass the payment token to Payment Processor, but it does not necessarily have to be Stripe, Adyen, or Braintree. In other words, Apple and Google handle "who can initiate payments most conveniently and securely," Stripe handles "how merchants can access, route, and manage payments," and PayPal tries to handle both "how consumers make payments with what accounts" and "how merchants complete settlements." $53 billion hunting desires to forge a global digital payment "super full-stack operating system" If the moats of Apple Pay and Google Pay mainly come from terminal ecosystems and traffic entry points; Stripe's real value comes from programmable infrastructure, data, and economies of scale; PayPal's scarcity lies in its merger of consumer networks and payment back-end - this is the core reason why it may be a strategic acquisition target for Stripe. The underlying logic behind Stripe's potential acquisition of PayPal is not simply to expand the scale of digital transactions on its platform, but to connect Stripe's merchant-side "operating system" with PayPal's consumer-side identity, wallet, and trust network in a closed loop. Stripe provides native API payment acceptance, subscription billing, Connect platform payments, risk control, card issuing, and stablecoin infrastructure, with a forecasted transaction volume of $1.9 trillion in 2025, a 34% year-over-year increase; PayPal, on the other hand, has over 430 million consumer accounts, Venmo, brand checkout buttons, BNPL, and Braintree enterprise payments, with a forecasted TPV of $1.79 trillion in 2025. After the two are combined, they can use a unified merchant-consumer data graph to enhance payment authorization rates, fraud detection, and intelligent routing efficiency, and keep more "in-network transactions" within their network to reduce some external processing costs and enhance the profitability of individual transactions. The more forward-looking value lies in AI intelligent sales: shopping AI must not only discover products but also complete identity authentication, payment authorization, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and aftersales fulfillment; Stripe's programmable infrastructure combined with PayPal's account credentials, consumer trust, and Agent Ready/Store Sync capabilities have the opportunity to become the default settlement layer for AI intelligent sales engines like OpenClaw to transition from "search" to "transaction". The combined Stripe-PayPal can cover merchant APIs, acquiring processing, consumer wallets, P2P, checkout systems, risk management, and fund services, belonging to the "full-stack payment and financial infrastructure platform". Apple Pay and Google Pay are terminal wallet entry points, Shopify is more about integrating stores, orders, inventory, checkout, and payments into a business operating system; Adyen, Fiserv/Worldpay, etc., are more focused on professional payment processing and acquiring infrastructure. PayPal's Braintree already provides end-to-end enterprise payment processing, while Stripe is clearly positioned as a programmable financial infrastructure that can orchestrate multiple processors and third-party systems. If Stripe were to acquire PayPal, global payments would move from relatively separate links in the value chain to cross-layer competition between full-stack payment platforms and ecosystem controllers at different levels. If the transaction ultimately goes through, global payment competition will shift from individual battles for digital wallets, merchant acquiring, and payment processing to cross-layer wars between full-stack payment platforms, end wallet gateways, merchant business ecosystems, and specialized financial infrastructure. Stripe-PayPal will compete asymmetrically with Apple Pay and Google Pay for terminal gateways, Shopify for merchant ecosystems, and Adyen, Fiserv/Worldpay for processing networks.