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Stripe reportedly wants Advent International alongside it to buy PayPal. That detail matters more than whatever the price turns out to be.

Stripe did not need a partner. It is the darling of the payment sector, private by choice, growing fast enough that Jessica Lesesky and I both put its year over year number in the mid thirties on the Watson Weekend episode this week. It has bought Payable, Index, and Lemon Squeezy without help from anybody. It has spent the last two years buying its way into stablecoins.

So a financial sponsor in the deal means one of two things. Either the structure is a take-private that gets carved up afterward, with Stripe keeping what it wants and Advent holding the rest, or Stripe is unwilling to carry the whole asset on its own books. I would like to tell you which, but I have not seen the terms.

What Stripe lacks is a consumer. Every payment it touches belongs to somebody else's relationship, and that works right up until Google, Apple, or OpenAI decides where the checkout button lives. Venmo fixes that. The rest of PayPal is a large, stalled, cash-generative business, which is what private equity buys on purpose.

My read on PayPal has not moved. The stock topped out in 2021 and account growth stalled shortly after. Branded checkout has been losing ground since. Jessica's version of the same point is that she forgets her login half the time, and Apple Pay and Google Pay do not have that problem. Nobody has produced a credible plan for that button in 20 years, and bringing in a sponsor is a way to share the downside, not a strategy.

Shopify has more riding on this than either buyer does. It has invested heavily in Stripe, in the hundreds of millions, and by our estimate accounts for roughly 13% of Stripe's volume. It also built Shop Pay while PayPal watched, which is one of the more criminal things to happen in payments in 25 years, and I mean that as praise. It still routes a good share of its partner payouts through PayPal. PayPal covers European markets Stripe does not.

If this closes, the validation runs to Shopify. Two of the biggest names in payments would be assembling with a sponsor's balance sheet what Shopify built in house four years ago.

Jessica's advice for merchants is the payments version of the channel argument. Take Shop Pay, because at this point it is universal, then go find diversification everywhere else, because a customer who only meets you through someone else's wallet is a customer you are borrowing.

Where you diversify to is the part neither of us solved on air. Every alternative rail belongs to a company with its own consumer ambitions, and the one that actually earned the consumer relationship is the platform already holding your checkout.

Home Depot is charging per emergency instead of per year. Express Delivery went nationwide this week. Three hours or less, flat fee, no membership.

Amazon, Walmart and Target all gate speed behind an annual subscription. That model smooths revenue and makes fast shipping feel free at the moment of purchase. Home Depot went the other direction. Its fee lands when the contractor is already on the roof and short on caulk, which is the moment price sensitivity disappears.

The release does not say what the fee is, and it does not name markets. It calls Home Depot the fastest delivery provider in home improvement without publishing any comparison.

Home Depot says 65% of in-stock parcel orders already move same day or next day. Roughly 55% of big and bulky arrives within two days. Next day appliance delivery covers 60% of the population. Express has to beat a network the company is already describing as fast, running out of the same 2,000 stores.

Three hours is a store labor problem more than a logistics one. Somebody has to walk the aisle, pick the adhesive, and stage it for a driver. Home Depot says faster speeds are coming in the months ahead.

BFCM prep is underway, and winning peak season this year comes down to unified data, smart design, and seamless customer experiences.

We’ve teamed up with Nosto, Klaviyo, Pattern, Marine Layer, Feefo, iAdvize, and moderator Rick Watson to bring you an exclusive 3-part series: The High-Growth Shopify Playbook.

The Episode Lineup: