Online payments

More U.S. states are legalizing sports gambling, providing a huge opportunity for payments companies that have been fattened by multibillion-dollar mergers.

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.