Sometimes, a little reassurance is all it takes to make everyone hope. As a leading money transfer and payment processing business, First Data should know better than most. The company has been struggling lately to improve the fortunes of its credit card issuing and processing operations, where margins have gotten squeezed. Instead of selling that troubled unit however, it has decided to spin-off Western Union, its fast-growing money transfer subsidiary.

It says a lot about expectations among investors that this was enough to boost its share price by more than 5 per cent. Spin-offs are often no more than the corporate equivalent of the cheque is in the mail. Giving shareholders new paper in a new entity does nothing to boost the underlying businesses. But First Data is probably right to hold on to credit cards. In theory, there should be some benefits from running those alongside its remaining activities of processing payments for banks and other business clients. Getting rid of Western Union might improve the prospect of those benefits finally being realised.