David Heun

An acquisition as large as Fiserv's deal to buy First Data has lots of moving parts, but one big piece may be a new First Data product that's designed to improve the vexing problem of payment approvals.

Mastercard has agreed to acquire digital bill payment platform Transactis, a deal the card network expects to close during the second quarter of 2019.

Earlier this week, the e-commerce payments giant announced a $400 million deal to acquire Hyperwallet and its payment distribution technology. The deal for Palo Alto-based Simility takes aim at a different need: applying machine learning to its data collection to prevent various types of fraud.

In recent years, there's been a lot of activity in payments M&A, but a few deals stand out — some for their size, and others for their ability to transform both parties in a fundamental way.

After its work with GPShopper produced favorable results the past two years, Synchrony Financial aims to dig deeper into mobile commerce by acquiring its partner.