Payments Industry Rises Thanks To MICROS, POS Companies

The payments industry jumped 0.33 percent on the stock market last week thanks to a strong performance from the POS Equipment and nearly universal modest gains.

MICROS had the best week of any company on our index, gaining 8.21 percent after the company issued a positive earnings report in which it met analyst expectations. The stock now sits at $47.95: the highest it’s registered since October 2012.

Fellow POS equipment/software companies VeriFone and USA Technologies also had strong weeks, gaining 6.62 percent and 3.92 percent to reach $35.94 and $2.12, respectively. Ingenico made modest gains while NCR Corporation saw modest losses, leading the POS equipment industry to come out ahead, gaining 5.03 percent for the week.

Bottomline Technologies also had a strong week, gaining 7.81 percent as the index’s second-best performer and growing to $29.80 per share. Heartland Payments rounded out our top five by jumping 4.31 percent to hit $30.99, growing in what was otherwise a largely static week for the acquirer/processor industry.

The prepaid industry had the worst week of any subset of the larger payments world, dropping -1.74 percent thanks to large losses by NetSpend Holdings, which dropped -6.92 percent to finish as our worst performer. This marks the second poor week in a row for NetSpend, which has dropped -2.19 percent over the past month and now sits at $11.16.

NetSpend’s prepaid counterpart, Green Dot, was able to rebound slightly from a poor performance a week ago, gaining 0.23 percent to climb back up to $13.18.