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PERSONAL FINANCE
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DATA:VISA,MASTERCARD,AMERICAN EXPRESS, JUNIPER RESEARCH, ALIPAY, “MOBILE PAYMENTS&FRAUD”BY KOUNT, THE FRAUD PRACTICE,
CARDNOTPRESENT.COM AND BRAINTREE
Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings
Ltd.’s WeChat Pay together have 90 percent
of the Chinese market. Alipay, with 520 million
users, is making deals with payment processors
in the U.S. as it seeks to follow customers as
they travel. It works in some New York taxis.
Pay Buttons
Spend
China’s
Big
Buttons
When you buy something with your phone
or online, you may see multiple buttons
that allow you to pay with a single click.
The war to be the one button that rules
them all is heating up. —
Jenny Surane
hit Vincent Delisle like a tractor two weeks ago. A
Caterpillar tractor, to be exact. He’d been out west,
meeting with clients of Scotiabank on the morning
of April 24. Caterpillar Inc. shares started of great
that day following stellar earnings—they were up
almost 5 percent. Just as fast, they sputtered and
reversed, ending the day with their worst decline in
two years. Why? Perhaps because the company also
said those earnings “will be the high watermark” for
the year. “You’re getting earnings that are blowing
out estimates and are phenomenal, and the market
is not happy,” Delisle says. “This is an illustration of
when the positive story is all priced in. It’s hard to
do anything to surprise the market.”
The threats all have the same ring: There’s too
much good news, so what if it’s all downhill from
here? Ten-year Treasury yields, stuck below 3 per-
cent for six years, crossed that threshold in late
April and have hopped around it since then. Higher
rates are generally a sign that the economy is
returning to health, but they can also make bonds
a somewhat more attractive alternative to stocks
and mean higher borrowing costs. In the low-rate
environment, companies leveraged up—and the
ones with the most debt are suddenly pariahs with
equity investors.
But here’s the thing: Earnings growth may be
about to slow, but S&P 500 income is still pro-
jected to rise 10 percent in 2019 and 2020. Price-
earnings ratios based on those earnings are
smack in the middle of the historical average.
There’s also no sign companies are getting stin-
gier with share repurchases. “Using a baseball
analogy, we’re in the ninth inning of the bull mar-
ket, but we are dealing with a very bad pitcher,”
says Delisle—meaning this thing could go for a long
time before the bull strikes out. There’s no rule
that says a rally has to end just because it’s been
going for a while.
Individual investors who tuned out the exu-
berance of recent years may want to ignore Wall
Street’s current angst as well. Turns in the mar-
ket are hard to call, and most people are better
of picking a strategy they can stick with through
the ups and downs. But the past few months
are a reminder that owning stocks does require
a little steel. “I try to help clients understand
that this volatility is just part of the game,” says
Peter Waterloo, a senior portfolio manager at
UBS Wealth Management USA. “And the fact that
we had low volatility for a long period is not the
norm.”
—Elena Popina and Sarah Ponczek
THE BOTTOM LINE Corporate America has been turning in
terrific earnings, but the market is focused on rising interest rates
and the return of volatility.
Share of
merchants
accepting
mobile wallets
(among those
who accept
at least one)
Visa Checkout,
Masterpass,
AmEx Express
Checkout
Apple Pay
PayPal
Chase Pay
Amazon Pay
These are run by the
big card networks. But they
want to reduce the button
clutter. Along with Discover
Financial Services,
they plan to create a single
service, yet to be named.
Its edge is the iPhone.
Users load their cards into
a digital wallet and
use Touch ID or Face ID to
authenticate purchases.
The one to beat in the U.S.
It has the most accounts
globally and is accepted by
the most merchants.
Promises to be a lower-
cost option for merchants,
which pay fees on digital
transactions. It works only
with Chase Visa cards.
Lets shoppers on other sites
pay with their
Amazon.comaccounts. To entice retailers,
the e-commerce giant
will pass along the discounts
it gets on credit card fees.
129m
combined users
86m
users
237m
users
28m
users
33m
users
PayPal
Apple Pay
Visa Checkout
Android Pay
AmEx Express Checkout
Masterpass
Samsung Pay
Alipay
Chase Pay
64%
16%
28%
14%
35%
15%
25%
10%
6%