Mobile-payment stocks follow technology, not finance

Mobile-payment companies are part of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC’s technology group, rather than finance, and their stock performance this year is in keeping with their classification. The ISE Mobile Payments Index, consisting of PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc. along with more traditional payment processors, has kept pace with the S&P 500 Information Technology Index and gained far more than the S&P 500 Financials Index. Many of the ISE index’s companies look like multiyear winners to Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at MKM Partners, who highlighted the group’s performance in a report Monday.

 

Mobile Pay

Mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer, and mobile wallet generally refer to payment services operated under financial regulation and performed from or via a mobile device. Instead of paying with cash, cheque, or credit cards, a consumer can use a mobile phone to pay for a wide range of services and digital or hard goods. 

Mobile payments will totally transform the way money is used across the world. While NFC technology will power it, there are other players that will also benefit. Here are the astounding projections of payment volumes from Statista, in billions of dollars.

Bank of America forecasts the market to reach $3 trillion by 2022. We're talking about a staggering 200-fold growth.

Here are three companies leading the mobile-payment race.

• Apple Inc. (AAPL) dominates mobile payments, with more than two million stores now accepting its Apple Pay app.
• Global Payments Inc(NYSE:GPN)
• Paypal Holdings Inc(NASDAQ:PYPL)
• Visa Inc. (V) runs world’s biggest electronic-payment network, with the average number of transactions clocking in at 150 million a day. On February 12, 2015,  it revealed details of its stake in Square Inc. (SQ), which makes an adapter that lets you process debit and credit card transactions through a smartphone.
• Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) grabs the No. 3 spot on my list of mobile payment winners. As far back as the first quarter of 2012, it was getting 10% of its US purchases through its mobile app. Fast-forward to the first quarter of 2015, and app-driven volumes have more than doubled, to 21%.

Apple (AAPL) Pay, Google (GOOG) Wallet and Samsung Pay and don't forget about Facebook (FB), which explicitly stated it wants to turn Facebook Messenger into a dominant player for mobile pay. With 800 million active users -- that's a great start.