The Splitit Payments Ltd (ASX: SPT) share price has leapt into the green from market open today, hitting an intraday high of 52 cents.
There is no market sensitive news specific to Splitit today, so let's have a look at what is behind today's gains.
Fintech shares lift from Afterpay deal
US payments giant Square agreed to a pending proposal to buy payment services company Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) for $39 billion in an all-stock transaction today.
Afterpay shares soared on the news, bringing companies in the Australian payments services basket along for the ride.
This is not an uncommon phenomenon when there is a large deal like this on the table. The reason is that investors have a reasonable anchor point to put a valuation on companies in the same industry.
Splitit Payments is a "cross-border payment solution" that enables its customers to split purchases into monthly instalments.
Therefore it stands to reason that Splitit shares fall in the peer group of Afterpay, and are realising gains on the back of this momentum.
And Splitit shares are not the only benefactors to the momentum created by the Afterpay deal.
Other names in the Fintech domain like Zip Co Ltd (ASX: Z1P) climbed 15% higher from the open at one point, whereas IOUPay Ltd (ASX: IOU) also jumped 10%.
Splitit Payments share price snapshot
The Splitit Payments share price has had a difficult year to date, posting a loss of 62% since January 1.
This loss extends the previous 12 month's decline of 64%, which has lagged the S&P / ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO)'s return of around 23% over the same time.
In the past month alone, Splitit shares have slipped 20% into the red.
