PayPal reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 28 that beat Wall Street’s expectations, with revenue up 5% and total payment volume reaching $486.4 billion, up 10% year-over-year. The company also raised its full-year guidance for transaction margin dollars and adjusted earnings per share. The report lands just eight days after PayPal’s board rejected a joint $53 billion take-private offer from Stripe and Advent International as inadequate.
What happened
Stripe and Advent’s July 20 offer valued PayPal at $60.50 per share — a roughly 28% premium — backed by about $50 billion in committed bank financing, with the two firms proposing to split ownership equally rather than break the company up. PayPal’s board turned it down, reportedly holding out for a price closer to $70 per share, advised by Goldman Sachs and Evercore.
The rejection was a bold bet given PayPal’s recent history: the stock has fallen nearly 90% from its 2021 peak, the company scrapped account-growth targets in 2022 after disclosing millions of fraudulent accounts, and CEO Alex Chriss was replaced in February 2026 after the board said his execution “was not in line with the Board’s expectations.” New CEO Enrique Lores, five months into the job, needed this earnings report to show the turnaround is real.
On the earnings call, Lores didn’t directly address the Stripe-Advent bid but said the board would “evaluate any offer that would create more shareholder value than executing the company’s growth plan,” according to Forbes and The Motley Fool’s coverage of the call — a more measured tone than the board’s outright rejection eight days earlier.
Why it matters
This is the first hard evidence since the bid was rejected that PayPal’s management can actually back up its “we’re worth more than $53 billion” argument with numbers instead of promises. A weak quarter would have made the board’s rejection look like stalling; a beat, plus raised guidance, gives Lores leverage to hold out for a higher price — or to walk away from a sale altogether.
What this means for small businesses
PayPal, Venmo, and Braintree touch a huge share of small-business payment processing, invoicing, and checkout flows. An acquisition — especially one combining Stripe’s processing infrastructure with PayPal’s consumer wallet and Venmo base — could eventually mean changes to merchant fees, API integrations, or which processor your e-commerce platform defaults to. A strengthened, independent PayPal buys more time before any of that happens, but it doesn’t make the sale question go away. If you accept PayPal, Venmo, or Braintree payments, this deal is worth tracking over the next few months rather than reacting to yet — no merchant-facing terms have changed as a result of either the bid or the earnings report.
“[The board would] evaluate any offer that would create more shareholder value than executing the company’s growth plan.” — PayPal CEO Enrique Lores, July 28, 2026 earnings call
The bottom line
PayPal didn’t kill the Stripe-Advent bid on July 28 — it just made the case that $53 billion undervalues the company. Whether that argument holds up will depend on whether this quarter’s growth continues, or whether Stripe and Advent come back with a higher offer. Either way, small businesses processing payments through PayPal’s ecosystem should watch for a resolution later this year rather than assume the deal is dead.
Sources: The Motley Fool, Forbes
