Online payments

Card issuers are accustomed to a world in which consumers choose which card to use at the moment they make a purchase. But in the Amazon Go model that more retailers want to emulate, that choice is made long before the shopper enters the store.

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.

PayPal is spending billions on M&A to throttle the heightened competition it faces from the likes of Square and Stripe.