One week after losing nearly 14 percent of its value, the prepaid industry rebounded over the past five days in what was an otherwise uneventful week for payments stocks.
The prepaid industry grew 4.36 percent, with NetSpend Holdings Inc. finishing as our biggest winner, growing to a $10.30 stock price for an increase of 5.2 percent. Green Dot continued its trend of having no defined trend, jumping back up to $10.03 for a 2.3 percent gain after falling -8.9 percent last week.
Prepaid’s massive loss last week came in large part because of the Bluebird alternative payments platform announced by Walmart and American Express. Prepaid’s stock is likely to be volatile for some time, as legitimate questions remain over whether prepaid competitors can thrive under Bluebird’s shadow.
Overall, the payments industry was fairly static this week, losing just -0.20 percent.
The four major networks experienced mixed results this week, settling for an overall -0/32 percent loss. Discover fared best with a 2.1 percent gain to reach $39.62, although its stock had traded as high as $40.83 on Wednesday. Visa saw a minute positive change, gaining 0.6 percent to rise to $139.96, while MasterCard saw a minute loss, falling 0.7 percent to $470.06. American Express had the worst week among networks, falling to $56.86 for a -1.8 percent loss.
Thanks to decent weeks from VeriFone and Ingenico, the POS Equipment/Software industry saw an overall increase of 1.27 percent. But the company with the overall worst week in our index was USA Technologies Inc., dropping -6.6 percent to $1.56.
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