Both Visa and Mastercard are among the firm’s top five holdings, said Michael Dillon, co-heads the Brown Advisory Global Leaders Strategy fund together with Bertie Thomson.
“We really think the cashless society and the move to payments is a huge long term structural benefit for people around the planet that has barely begun,”
“It is advanced in some countries, such as the UK and the US,” he said, Scandinavia is at the forefront of the trend. “In Sweden they are already trying to move to 100% cashless in some instances. Sweden is by far the most advanced – it’s already gone cashless everywhere,” said Dillon.
Meanwhile in India, the government is just starting to move payments from government, in particular. “It used to be cash and the cash would come down the chain and by the time the actual recipients got the cash, unsurprisingly, not all the cash would be there. Now they’re using smartcards and base it off the government ID and now the people that need the money are actually getting effective pay rises and subsidy rises because they are getting all the money. That’s hugely beneficial and make government more effective.”
Asked his view, Andrew Herberts, head of private investment management UK at Thomas Miller Investment said while his firm currently has no investment positioning towards those themes or to Visa and Mastercard, it is something they should be looking at.
But, he added: “There is still much cash being used in the US, so I’d say that they still need to catch up and there are opportunities there.”
