San Francisco, Calif.-based Visa broke a company record, reaching $131 per share on July 16, according to a San Francisco Business Times report. The shares rose $3.06 or 2.47 percent, compared to MasterCard’s 1.7 percent ($7.29) gain.
The rise comes after the recent settlement with retailers, which cleared up uncertainty for the two payment companies and involved several large banks owned by the company before being transformed into independent, public banks.
The report also says that investors in Warren Buttet’s Berkshire Hathaway—which holds stakes in both big companies—may appreciate the “toll-gate-collector role” the companies have in global business. In that role, Visa and MasterCard each collect a small fee from all transactions in their networks and take no credit risk, which the companies leave to the banks.
The gains come in spite of a trend of falling retail sales, which has some economic analysts worried about the market forecast.
