PayPal shares sank as much as 15-17% Friday after Bloomberg reported that a buyout consortium of private equity firm Advent International and payments company Stripe has abandoned its pursuit of the company, walking away from an offer that had topped $50 billion.

According to Bloomberg's report, people familiar with the talks said the two sides simply couldn't agree on price. The stock fell to roughly $52.45 in early trading, putting PayPal's market value near $52.6 billion — not far above where the takeover price itself would have landed.

The deal talks stretch back to February, when Bloomberg first reported that Stripe was weighing an acquisition of some or all of PayPal after a prolonged stock slump had wiped out a large chunk of the company's value. PayPal reportedly found the initial offer too low, and the two sides spent months negotiating toward a higher number that never materialized.

A round trip for the stock

The irony is that the takeover speculation itself had been propping PayPal's shares up. According to market data cited by TradingKey, PayPal stock had climbed more than 40% this quarter on hopes a deal would close, even after the company's underlying business had struggled with slowing transaction growth. Friday's collapse effectively erases those buyout-driven gains in a single session.

The news landed alongside a sharply different story elsewhere in the payments sector. 24/7 Wall St. reported that buy-now-pay-later rival Affirm surged 13% the same morning after posting what it called its most profitable quarter ever, underscoring how divergent investor sentiment has become across the fintech space depending on who has a growth story to tell versus who needs a rescue deal.

Analysts covering the sector said the breakdown raises fresh questions about PayPal's standalone turnaround plan under its current leadership, since the buyout talks had effectively given the company a multi-month reprieve from having to prove it can grow revenue and user engagement on its own. With that safety net gone, attention shifts back to PayPal's upcoming earnings guidance and whether management can articulate a credible growth story without a suitor waiting in the wings.

Neither PayPal nor Stripe has issued a public statement confirming the details of why the talks fell apart, and it remains unclear whether a lower-priced offer could resurface later this year.