Rumors suggest that payment start-up Square is considering launching its IPO as early as 2014.
The mobile payment company was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and the company launched its service in 2010.
Square offers services such as the Square Wallet, which allows customers to set up a tab and pay for their order just with their name (or a barcode) using a stored credit, debit or gift card, and Square Cash, which allows the user to email money to anybody's debit card.
In 2012, coffee giant Starbucks became one of the first vendors to accept payment using Square. Starbucks is also said to have invested $25 million in the company.
According to a recent Wall Street report, Square is holding discussions with various banks, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and is planning its IPO in 2014. However, the company has not officially announced its plans to go public.
"Square is growing nearly as fast as its soon-to-be-public sibling, with sales approaching $1 billion in 2014, according to an internal projection people familiar with the matter shared with the Wall Street Journal. That revenue represents what Square takes from the roughly $30 billion in total transactions it expects to process next year, before it passes much of that amount on to partnering credit card companies," per Wall Street Journal.
Dorsey previously said that the company does not make a profit; however, he has plans that will allow Square to make profits by 2015.
Square is also taking relevant steps to increase revenue and at the same time appoint members at the managerial level. The company recently hired Sarah Friar as the Chief Financial Officer of the company. Friar was a managing director at Goldman Sachs for over 10 years. Another former CFO of Goldman Sachs, David Viniar, also joined the company's board.
In 2012, Square raised around $200 million from Rizvi Traverse Management and the company has also taken over $340 million from various investors such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Visa.
As the company has not officially announced its plans to launch its IPO in the near term, it remains to be seen how swiftly Square can manage to go public.
