Payment Networks & Processors (V, MA, PYPL, FISV, FIS, GPN, AXP, XYZ, ADYEY, etc.)

[frommi]

Payment sector down big because Stripe, Visa and Mastercard work on a stablecoin platform. The market says i should be frightened. GPN down 12%, even V and MA down 2%, whats going on? Should we worry? 
This seems like a risk very long term, but as cheap as some of the stocks are is the long term even relevant?

[Spekulatius]

Adyen $Adyen  in the dumpster after a negative research report from Cleveland something according to bird app posts. Bought more shares this morning.

 

What a dumpster fire this sector it’s.

Edited June 5 by Spekulatius

[Dalal.Holdings]

8 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Adyen $Adyen  in the dumpster after a negative research report from Cleveland something according to bird app posts. Bought more shares this morning.

 

What a dumpster fire this sector it’s.

Who ever heard of Cleveland Research before? What a clown show

[Spekulatius]

26 minutes ago, Dalal.Holdings said:

Who ever heard of Cleveland Research before? What a clown show

Fragile market and a fragile sector and this is what you get.

[KPO]

2 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Fragile market and a fragile sector and this is what you get.

Ripe for consolidation in my view. TOST & PYPL have the best balance sheets, while GPN, FISV and FOUR have poor balance sheets, but large customer bases and are cheap in their own right. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. I could see PYPL broken up for parts, while TOST seems like the highest quality standalone business, but exposed to economic cycles due to their customer base, and still not statistically dirt cheap, but certainly fair value. 

[Spekulatius]

This is a good podcast about TOST.

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/toast-sticky-saas-business-breakdowns-ep-247/id1559120677?i=1000770210210
 

There is an earlier one from 2023 (or thereabouts) that is worth listening to as well for context. It’s impressive what they have accomplished since then. As far as economic sensitivity, it‘s not as much as you think since the get a cut from restaurants revenue not profit.

 

Edited June 6 by Spekulatius

[KPO]

1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:

This is a good podcast about TOST.

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/toast-sticky-saas-business-breakdowns-ep-247/id1559120677?i=1000770210210
 

There is an earlier one from 2023 (or thereabouts) that is worth listening to as well for context. It’s impressive what they have accomplished since then. As far as economic sensitivity, it‘s not as much as you think since the get a cut from restaurants revenue not profit.

 

Thanks for sharing. I’m impressed with how dominant they seem in the small to midsized restaurant business where we live and where we travel, but it’s still an economically sensitive sector. 

[frommi]

In the past few days i am thinking about how the digital euro (not wero) will change payments in europe and i can't see how MA&V +european banks aren't the losers of this. Why is this not priced into these companies today?
Every merchant will try to get customers with bonus systems to switch over like it worked in Brazil and India and every merchant+bank will be forced to use/offer it. 
The merchant payment processors doesn't seem to be impacted because they can still earn their fees. Just Ayden will lose its interchange fee because it is also the bank, so overall i think that Ayden will probably lose the most of all the merchant payment processors in europe because for a merchant than the fees aren't material different to other payment processors?
 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

On 4/15/2026 at 1:59 PM, tnathan said:

Definitely not just a button. Lot of work has to go into (1) integrating directly with the merchant (2) having custom merchant specific pricing (3) building good enough underwriting models to operate profitably (4) building a strong consumer end to have a 2 sided marketplace on which you can layer additional products (klarna card).

 

People assume BNPL is risky but loss rates are very low driven by the fact that every transaction is reudnerwritten (unlike Line of credit on credit card) and the duration is very low so udnerwriting policies can be shifted quickly

 

I understand how BNPL is currently implemented is perhaps hard to repliacte - but why not by the card issuers themselves on payment terms for the credit cards?

 

AmEx used to be a charge card you paid off every month. And then over the course of 1-2 years back in the late 2010s, they opted to allow consumers to roll balances, charge interest, and have a BNPL option of paying off large purchases at a lower interest rate over the course of 3-, 6-, or 9- months. 

 

Why couldn't a credit card issuer simply adopt BNPL-like terms for a specific card they issue and then no infrastructure, buttons, or merchant partnerships need be had? I doubt AmEx would do this given their upper-income focus on consumers, but it doesn't strike as difficult for any card-issuer partnered with a bank focusing on mid- to lower-income consumers a la Capital One/Discover. 

[tnathan]

10 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

I understand how BNPL is currently implemented is perhaps hard to repliacte - but why not by the card issuers themselves on payment terms for the credit cards?

 

AmEx used to be a charge card you paid off every month. And then over the course of 1-2 years back in the late 2010s, they opted to allow consumers to roll balances, charge interest, and have a BNPL option of paying off large purchases at a lower interest rate over the course of 3-, 6-, or 9- months. 

 

Why couldn't a credit card issuer simply adopt BNPL-like terms for a specific card they issue and then no infrastructure, buttons, or merchant partnerships need be had? I doubt AmEx would do this given their upper-income focus on consumers, but it doesn't strike as difficult for any card-issuer partnered with a bank focusing on mid- to lower-income consumers a la Capital One/Discover. 

Well yes the mechanics of an issuer turning on the ability to 'BNPL' something after purchase is relatively easy, and has been done by issuers for many years (I think Amex, Citi, Chase all have had offerings live for years) but they have not made a dent into the integrated at checkout BNPL players. The interesting question is not whether they can create their own offering post checkout, it's WHY these offerings have basically been a 0 while the core BNPL players continue growing at 20%+ annually.

 

A few reasons:

(1) The offer AT POINT OF SALE is the product!! You need to offer this while someone is checking out for conversion to be impacted. It's a much harder change in behavior to say to someone "buy it like normal and then split it in our app". An installment plan activated in a banking app after you already bought the thing does none the conversion work. ... whether you think it should is beside the point. It's just clearly not a viable offer based on the fact that these products haven't worked.

 

(2) The economics are all wrong. What makes the BNPL at checkout model work is that the merchant is willing to pay fees because BNPL increases conversion and basket sizes. They're willing to pay ~4% on a pay in four txn vs. 2-2.5% on a normal cc txn. If you are Chase and offering an installment plan post checkout, you are taking on the same amount of risk as a BNPL provider, but not getting paid anything by the merchant to do so. For the group of consumers that would want to use this product, it becomes uneconomic (can you really compete with Klarna or Affirm when they get 4% from the merchant and you don't??) ... further, the lifeblood of the subprime issuers is the revolving interest on balances. Why would you transition someone from that highly profitable product to a much less profitable offering (installment loans). And if the issuers decided to charge substantial interest on the installment loans, why would a consumer use the product when they could get the same loan from Klarna or Affirm at a much better price because the merchant is paying a large chunk (or all) of the fee? 

 

(3) Because you are underwriting every transaction, Klarna and Affirm can reach consumers the credit card companies can't. For example, a thin-file consumer can get accepted for a $200 bnpl loan but would never be accepted for a $5k line of credit. Therefore, if a cc company can't bring in a customer on a normal LOC, they won't be able to offer them this post purchase installment product either. The beauty of the BNPL model is the reunderwriting of every transaction.

 

the moat is that the loans are (a) merchant-funded (b) at point-of-sale (c) each txn is reunderwritten (d) signing agreements with all the merchants who have specific / custom terms that work for them and their customer base (e) the model puts Affirm and Klarna in front of consumers who have traditionally been excluded from the credit card ecosystem so there's a legitimate case that these consumers are incremental to merchants and improve conversion.