Visa, MasterCard weakness on Walmart news ‘overdone,’ says Keefe Bruyette

Keefe Bruyette analyst Sanjay Sakhrani notes that Walmart (WMT) announced a partnership with Fiserv (FI) via which customers will soon have the option to pay directly from their bank accounts with instant transfers for online purchases using Fiserv’s (FI) NOW Network, adding that “we don’t see this as a material threat to the networks for now.” The value proposition to get consumers to change their behaviors toward bank account-based payments has to be stronger and until this happens, the firm sees “little risk of disruption to card volumes” and believes the relative weakness in Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA) on this news “is overdone.”