Square, the company that is often talked about as the “other” company that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is supporting is about to make a much bigger name for itself. The mobile payment device filed its public documents for an initial public offering (IPO) on Wednesday, October 14 after first doing this confidentially this summer. In those documents, the company said it was planning on raising about $275 million though experts, including Fortune Magazine, say the amount was likely a placeholder figure which will be increased at a later date.
The company has released plans to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol, “SQ” and Goldman Sachs is going to be the lead underwriter. There are other big time banks working on this IPO such as J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley involved in the rollout.
Square has actually had a bit of a hard 2015 after seeing rather impressive numbers when it came to users of its credit card processor device and application. The company is also trying to diversify a bit, as it rolled out a payroll management application for testing last year.
The company and its mobile payment device has long been a symbol of the changing ways in which companies do business. The firm reports that in 2014, there company processed more than $23.8 billion in payments. The firm makes its money by getting a cut of all payments processed. This amount was generated by 446 million individual payments from approximately 144 million credit and debit cards.
When it comes to claiming success, Square points to the massive number of users who process five or more payments. Square claims that repeat users make up more than 97 percent of all Square users. In the long run though, it appears moving into areas like payroll management, as well as cash advances could be how the company finds real success.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi