Jake Ruth
Product Engineer at PostHog, Co-Founder of Stock Unlock (YC W22), AI Engineering
Shift4 Payments may look cheap, but payment processing is a margin race to the bottom and a tough business. Companies with much stronger moats are a better use of capital, since paying fair value for a great business beats buying an OK business cheaply. @PronkDaniel notes it is growing strongly at 6.5 times estimated free cash flow while conceding its moat is questionable. x.comÂ
Shift4 Payments has too many red flags to own, with Jared Isaacman's departure the final straw, and there are many better opportunities elsewhere. The company did too many acquisitions too quickly; Global Blue looks like a mistake for now, though the deal can still work if Shift4 upsells and cross-sells its 300,000+ merchants. x.com x.comÂ
PayPal's cost cuts and reserve releases prop up short-term numbers, while investing for growth wastes time. Its slow bleed gives delusional bulls hope, making it the ultimate value trap; it should not be a public company. x.comÂ
Shift4 Payments looks mispriced. The founder-led payments platform is growing more than 30% yet trades at a single-digit forward P/E. It posted record 2025 results and made major acquisitions in a massive payments market, but the stock is still more than 50% below its highs. x.comÂ
Shift4 and its payment-processing rivals are driving each other's returns toward zero through aggressive merchant poaching. A former Shift4 VP, cited by @Speedwell_LLC, says it offers free hardware and pays merchants' termination fees to switch, but every competitor does the same. Each wrongly believes it has special sauce to win that fight, and the stocks are down around 80%. x.com x.comÂ
PayPal faces an existential competitive threat from X Money, which will kill its business. x.comÂ
Shift4 is too cheap at these levels, essentially a private-equity-style vehicle in public markets that is hard to appreciate but runs a good playbook; Jared Isaacman is not selling out down here. Its Global Blue acquisition was poorly timed as US-Iran tensions crush international travel, Fiserv's turmoil hit payments, and AI angst weighs on software. Public investors can also choose easier-to-model stories with cleaner KPIs and capital structures. x.comÂ
Marqeta could get a bid as a play on virtual cards for agentic payment flows, and it is cheap at 5x EBITDA with low-double-digit growth. Peers like RingCentral, Five9, Fastly, Akamai and Bandwidth trade at premium multiples relative to growth, and Marqeta could plausibly get the same. Renewal questions remain, and Stripe Link stays the default for some AI apps, but new apps may partner with Marqeta or dual-source. x.com x.comÂ
dLocal sits in payment processing, a sector that 30 years of data show to be dead because margins are low. Fintech is just software, without the asset leverage that banks have. dLocal fell about 11% after EPS of $0.14 missed the $0.15 estimate, per TrendSpider. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Shift4 Payments is about 55% undervalued against an estimated fair value near $105 while growing around 30%. It owns the full payment flow from point-of-sale hardware to software, supporting strong take rates and margins. Gross profit grew 34% in 2025, with about 30% guided for 2026, and margins keep expanding under strong management. Risks are integrating its many acquisitions, competition in a payments-only business and about $5 billion of debt that would bite if growth or profits falter. … Show more
PayPal's growth has stalled and it faces too much fintech competition. That view could change if the company adapts, pivots and proves otherwise. x.comÂ
