Here’s 4 top picks for fintech growth

Article Excerpt

A financial technology, or “fintech,” stock typically offers one, or several, financial services that rely on technology to gain efficiencies. While there are many startup firms in this field, we prefer well-established companies, such as the four we analyze below, with the resources to develop their own fintech technologies. VISA INC. $154 (New York symbol V; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 2.3 billion; Market cap: $354.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 15.9; Dividend yield: 0.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest electronic payments network to process credit, debit, prepaid and commercial transactions in over 200 countries. Visa gets most of its revenue from the fees it charges card issuers and merchants using its network. In addition, it’s the banks—and not Visa—that are responsible for evaluating customer creditworthiness and collecting payments. In its fiscal 2019 first quarter, ended December 31, 2018, the company processed 33.9 billion transactions. That’s up 11.2% from a year earlier. As a result, revenue rose 13.2%, to…