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A spate of media reports that Visa Inc. owns nearly 10% of Square Inc. are wrong and are based on a misreading of a filing Visa made Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified, and a stock analyst contacted by Digital Transactions News.
The reports said Visa owns 9.99% of the merchant processor. In fact, Visa owns 4.19 million shares of Square’s Class B common stock, or 1.4% of the Class B shares in issue as of Square’s November IPO. Some 3.52 million of Visa’s shares can be converted to Class A shares, which would make them eligible to be sold on the open market. Square had issued only 27 million Class A shares at the time of the IPO. Visa first took an undisclosed stake in Square in April of 2011.
