Networks, Remittance Segments Help Payments To Strong Stock Week

The three largest U.S. networks all saw significant gains this week, with Visa leading the way with a jump of 6.09 percent to $169.92 per share, reaching a new all-time high for the company. MasterCard saw a very strong week as well, jumping 4.57 percent to $541.43 amidst news of its Memorandum of Understanding with eCommerce giant Alibaba Group. American Express saw a more modest gain, jumping 1.87 percent to end the week at $67.46

Discover served as the lone network to finish in the red, but lost just -0.36 percent, dropping to $44.86. Overall, the network industry increased by 5.05 percent.

The remittance subset had the second-strongest performance of any payments sub-industry, rising 3.97 percent on the backs of strong performances by MoneyGram International and Western Union alike.

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MoneyGram finished as our index’s fourth-best performer, gaining 4.75 percent to reach $18.10 after announcing the completion of their debt refinancing on Thursday. Overall, the company has seen an increase of over 30 percent over the past three months.

Western Union gained 2.73 percent to finish the week at $15.09, announcing the launch of new SME-targeted products on Thursday as well. The company has gained almost 9 percent on a year-to-date basis.

The overall biggest winner in our index this week was Net 1 UEPS Technologies, which jumped an impressive 22.92 percent to a per-share price of $7.40 after a South African judge ruled in favor of Net 1 and SASSA over a legal tender dispute.

VeriFone saw another week on the bottom of our index, falling -2.64 percent to $20.68. VeriFone has lost nearly a third of its value since the beginning of 2013.