Universal Gains Lead To Strong Week For Payments

The payments industry gained a modest 0.63 percent on the stock market this week, as every industry subset finished with positive results.

One week after suffering from a significant loss, the remittance industry rebounded nicely, growing 4.77 percent to finish with the strongest subset performance on our indices. Western Union led the group with a 5.03 percent jump to $15.04, while MoneyGram International followed suit with a 2.57 percent jump to $17.53.

The strongest individual performance on the week went to NCR Corporation, which grew 6.90 percent to $28.20 to build on a strong year-to-date growth of 10.68 percent. Global Cash Access Holdings barely missed out on top honors, gaining 6.73 percent to hit $7.14 after a turbulent week.

The acquirer/processor industry also saw a nice rebound from the previous week, jumping 3.58 percent. Fidelity National Information Service and ACI Worldwide each saw gains north of 4.00 percent, while TSYS and Fiserv each saw gains between 3.50 and 4.00 percent.

The company with the worst performance of the week was USA Technologies Inc, dropping -8.7 percent to just $2.31 per share after a steep decline in price on Friday. Net1 UEPS Technologies and Heartland Payment Systems rounded out the bottom three, finishing with more modest losses of -2.22 percent and -1.01 percent, respectively.

Interestingly, the four major U.S. networks all had very similar weeks, finishing with slight gains of between 0.26 percent and 0.58 percent each.