Why Payment-Processing Stocks Jumped Today

Shares of payment-processing companies jumped today after Pfizer and BioNTech announced that early results from clinical trials of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate showed 90% effectiveness in preventing participants from contracting the virus. The public health crisis has had broad macroeconomic impacts that have reduced payment volumes, and progress on a potential vaccine is sparking hope that payment activity will soon recover.

Here's how several major payment-processing stocks finished today's session:

The U.S. economy officially entered into a recession earlier this year at the onset of the pandemic, and millions of Americans have lost their jobs due to the crisis. Those factors contributed to a broad decline in payment volumes, and payment processing companies primarily derive revenue from taking a cut of those volumes. As the economy has started to reopen, those volumes have been starting to recover in recent months.

Source Fool.com