Coinspeaker
Better Buy: Visa (V) vs. Mastercard (MA)

Mastercard Inc (NYSE: MA) and Visa Inc (NYSE: V) are two of the world’s largest payment platforms. Both companies are pretty much the go-to standards when it comes to international remittance. Regularly pulling in impressive numbers for many years now, they both seem like worthy enough contenders in their own rights.

Both companies are almost always pitted against each other because they are easily the largest payment firms. In addition, both companies seem to mirror each other’s moves sometimes. However, as similar as both companies are, their stock trajectories might tell different stories.

Currently trading at $294.64, Mastercard (MA) stock has lost around 1.20% from its previous close of $297.79. Mastercard stock has climbed less than 1% in the last one month and 12.44% in the last one year. However, in the last five days, MA stock has lost more than 6% and over 2% in 2020.

Even with these numbers, Mastercard stock has performed better than the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry in the last year. According to Zack analyst, Mastercard is pulling in interesting results because of a bigger move to digital payments, from physical monetary transactions. While this is not a feature exclusive to Mastercard, it has helped the company rise.

Visa (V) stock is trading at $189.97 after losing over $2 and 1.15% from its previous close at $192.26. In the last five days, Visa has lost 5.27% and 1.20% in the last one month. While its 3-month figure at $24.39% isn’t the worst, Visa’s 2020 gains sit at 0.63%, but has pulled 11.51% in the past year.

Zack analysts are currently putting Visa’s full-year figures at $4.99 per share, which will be a year-on-year crash of 8.27%. Zack also suggests a total 2020 $21.86 billion revenue which will represent a 4.84% year-on-year drop.

In addition, Visa’s figures for the second quarter hit $5.85 billion, surpassing expectations by $101 million. This may also be due to the increase in the use of digital channels because of the coronavirus pandemic. Considering that Visa said people spent a lot less in March, this figure is somewhat impressive.

Last week, both stocks were performing healthily and trading in green. This is largely because the financial markets, not just in the U.S., have begun to see some post-lockdown respite. As many jurisdictions slowly eased their lockdown, the market seemed eager to get back to normal.

However, one thing to consider is the possible explosion in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. As these different lockdowns continually ease out, the number of confirmed cases is already on the rise. Generally, close contact with people as life resumes increases the number of infections. If this number starts to rise again, there’s a good chance that financial markets take another plunge. Both Visa and Mastercard could very easily take a beating, however temporarily, from the effects.

Moving forward, shareholders and investors may want to consider the future of the market, as may be affected by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Better Buy: Visa (V) vs. Mastercard (MA)

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