If you’ve been following the mobile payments industry and starting to think that it’s the wave of the future, you might well have been considering investing. You’ve got a lot of choices on that front—and before I go any farther with this latest news I’ll note that this is not investment advice—and now a two year old fund is rapidly stepping up on this front: the ETMFG Prime Mobile Payments Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF).
With a growing number of operations looking to mobile payments, such a fund takes on a whole new life. A recent vote from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City to phase out the MetroCard system and replace it with a contactless payment system is just one of the latest such moves to mobile payments. With this vote in place, users will be able to turn to a digital wallet program like Apple Pay, or a direct bank account connection, to purchase rides on public transit systems.
That puts some real firepower behind an operation like the ETFMG Prime Mobile Payments fund, and with 34 holdings in its control, 5.6 million shares outstanding, and total net assets of just over $187.2 million. It currently trades on the NYSE Arca, at last report, and has been gathering steam since July of 2015.
While the ETFMG Prime Mobile Payments fund may not be the investment vehicle of choice for at least some investors out there, it underscores one point surprisingly well: this is not a fad. Granted, mobile payments in general are still a fairly young technology on some fronts, having really only started to pick up with the arrival of Apple Pay roughly three years ago. It’s still a new field, but there’s been a lot of growth.
The idea that some would want to invest in this growing market, therefore, isn’t out of line, and a comparatively simple operation like an ETF stepping in to offer a way to get behind that growth just makes sense. With New York’s public transit looking to take on mobile payments, mobile payments firms like Alipay going increasingly global and an array of merchants looking to get in on the action, it’s clear that mobile payments are a technology that’s here to stay.
SOURCE: paymentweek.com