5 Best Dividend Paying Stocks To Buy Now

4. Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 139

Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) is an American multinational financial services company that operates in the payments industry. It has been growing its dividends consistently for the past 10 years, which makes it one of the best dividend stocks on our list. The company offers a per-share dividend of $0.57 every quarter and has a dividend yield of 0.57%, as recorded on August 25.

Of the 910 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey, 139 funds owned stakes in Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) in Q2 2023, with a collective value of over $14.7 billion.

Baron Funds mentioned Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) in its Q2 2023 investor letter. Here is what the firm has to say:

“We modestly trimmed Visa Inc., Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA), and Accenture plc to manage the position sizes and raise capital to fund purchases elsewhere. These stocks remain full-sized positions and high-conviction ideas in the Fund.

Another fintech industry trend we’re seeing is a pickup in M&A activity, most notably in the payments sector. The year started with Nuvei’s $1.3 billion acquisition of Paya announced in January. In April, Network International received an initial takeover offer from a group of private equity firms, which was then topped by Brookfield Asset Management whose $2.8 billion offer was accepted by the Board in June. Following reports earlier this year of a bidding war between Visa Inc. and Mastercard Incorporated to acquire cloud-based issuer processor and core banking software provider Pismo.”