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First Data, the Atlanta-based company filed for an IPO, many of the details were not disclosed, but many expect the offering to be the larger of the year. K.K.R. bought the company in 2007 and currently owns 74%. First Data will use the IPO to pay down some of its $21b in debt.
Now First Data claims some 4,000 financial institutions around the world as clients, processing more than 2,300 transactions a second. “We love the hand that we have — we have millions of clients, we know how to innovate and collaborate, our leadership bench is deep, and being in business with K.K.R. has been great,” Frank Bisignano, First Data’s chief executive, wrote in a letter included in the I.P.O. filing... The company said that it lost $265 million last year, narrowing a multiyear string of losses, even as its revenue climbed to $11.1 billion. Yet as First Data moves beyond processing credit card transactions into a broader array of payment services, it is facing an increasingly crowded field of competitors, including PayPal and a longtime competitor, Total System Services.
