PayPal shares surged Wednesday after Stripe and private equity firm Advent International submitted a joint offer worth more than $53 billion for the company that helped bring digital payments into mainstream online commerce.
The proposed acquisition would pair two companies associated with different periods of the internet economy. PayPal emerged in the late 1990s and became one of the defining payment platforms of the early e-commerce era, while Stripe grew during the following decade by supplying payment-processing software and financial infrastructure to online businesses.
