POS equipment/software companies had the strongest three and four of the strongest five performances in our index this week, but overall, the payments industry fell -0.75 percent thanks to down weeks for the prepaid, network and remittance segments.
Unsurprisingly, NCR Corporation finished first in our index, jumping 4.79 percent to $27.78 after word broke of their new deal with PayPal, which we covered here. Narrowly trailing NCR was MICROS, which grew 4.64 percent to $44.44. Ingenico and VeriFone had strong weeks as well, increased by 3.94 percent and 2.66 percent, respectively.
Conversely, the POS industry also contained the worst performer of the week: USA Technologies, which dropped -8.72 percent to $1.99. Still, as a whole, the POS industry grew 3.95 percent, easily finishing as the top performing industry this week.
The prepaid industry, on the other hand, saw the worst performance this week, falling -4.26 percent thanks to down weeks for both NetSpend Holdings and Green Dot. NetSpend fell -3.26 percent to $11.58, while Green Dot had the second worst week of any company on our index, losing -6.19 percent to hit $13.03. Green Dot’s fall came after SunTrust downgraded its rating of the stock from neutral to reduce.
Finally, a big reason for payments’ overall down performance was the network industry, which did not have a single company finish in the black this week. MasterCard had the “best” week of the four companies, losing -1.45 percent to hit $521.00. Visa had a similar week, dropping -1.79 percent to fall to $158.27. American Express lost -2.38 percent to hit $59.78, while Discover had the worst week of any network and the third-worst in our index, falling to $38.55 after losing -4.56 percent.
