Mobile pay start-up Square valued at $1 bln: report

A group of investors plan to buy a stake in Square that would value the mobile payment start-up at $1 billion even as it competes with much larger rivals, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The investment group led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was to announce as early as Wednesday the purchase of a $100 million stake in the company, which was founded just eight months ago, the newspaper said.

The company is struggling to fend off the likes of Google, Intuit, eBay and PayPal as it muscles into the emerging mobile payment market.

But it has a certain prestige owing to its co-founder and chief executive officer, 34-year-old Jack Dorsey, who has been a Silicon Valley star since he helped found the popular micro-blogging website Twitter.

The company markets a pocket-sized credit card reader that can be plugged into a smartphone to allow anyone to accept credit or debit card payments on the spot.

(c) 2011 AFP