Stripe and buyout firm Advent are no longer pursuing their acquisition of PayPal as was reported earlier this month, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. If it had gone through, the deal could have been could have been one of the biggest leveraged buyouts ever at well over $50 billion, according to the report. 

In July this year when PayPal was trading at historic lows and valued at $40 billion, Stripe and Advent reportedly made an offer worth around $53 billion. Their suitor was said to have rejected it, so the Stripe group was reportedly preparing a higher bid. PayPal was worth as much as $320 billion at its highest market value during the height of the COVID pandemic. 

Stripe and its partner likely saw PayPal’s recent struggles as an opportunity to buy it at a significant discount. However, the pioneering payment company’s latest quarter beat most estimates which (along with the takeover rumors), helped boost its stock price by 40 percent. That may in turn have raised the selling price, making a leveraged takeover less feasible. 

PayPal’s new CEO Enrique Lores, appointed in March, has been working to turn the company around by dividing it into three units focused on checkout, Venmo and payment/crypto. A Stripe-PayPal merger could have reduced the former’s reliance on Visa and MasterCard, while allowing Stripe to incorporate PayPal’s Venmo checkout system and its crypto features. Stripe and Advent could still opt to make a bid for PayPal in the future, Bloomberg said.