• Merchant processor EVO Payments International has acquired payments-solutions specialist Sterling Payment Technologies. Paul Hunter, Sterling’s president and chief executive, will manage the Sterling unit within EVO. Terms of the deal were not announced. • An app called Clarity Money has debuted to help consumers manage their finances by performing such chores as negotiating bills, choosing …

When JPMorgan Chase & Co. decided to recruit order-ahead capability for its Chase Pay mobile wallet, it settled on a 6-year-old mobile payments startup whose technology could give Chase Pay a vital boost in a crucial merchant segment. Meanwhile, the alliance could also bring tens of millions of new customers …

The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is questioning Mastercard Inc.’s planned $920 million acquisition of London-based VocaLink Holdings Ltd., a deal which if consummated would give Mastercard a strong presence in several non-card payment systems, including the Faster Payments initiative in the United States. VocaLink operates Bacs, the U.K.’s …

• Automaker Volkswagen AG has acquired PayByPhone Technologies Inc., according to press reports. A unit of U.K.-based payments processor PayPoint plc, Vancouver-based PayByPhone offers a platform for mobile payments for parking and claims 12.5 million users in North America, Europe, and Australia. The company handles more than $300 million in parking payments annually, according …

Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit will launch two new smart watches in the first quarter of 2017 that will run on the new Android Wear 2.0 platform and will support Android Pay, Google’s mobile-payments service. Jeff Chang, product manager for Android Wear, announced the news in an interview with The Verge, a tech Web …

• The law firm Pomerantz LLP, which specializes in securities class actions, said it is “investigating claims on behalf of investors of PayPal Holdings Inc.” The firm says it is looking into whether PayPal executives or directors violated the Securities Exchange Act with respect to the timing of a disclosure of …

• North American Cannabis Systems Inc. said it will work with Alternet Systems Inc. to launch a payment system for the cannabis market. Legal cannabis sales are expected to hit almost $7 billion this year. Details of how the system would work were not disclosed. • Elan Financial Services has agreed to provide credit …

• Payment provider CardConnect released a beta version of Bolt P2PE, its cloud-based API terminal service that enables software companies to integrate their applications with PCI-validated point-to-point encryption and EMV devices for card-present transactions. • Wizard World Inc., producer of such pop culture events as Comic Con, is working with Front Gate Tickets for …

• Mobile in-store payments will total $91.7 billion by 2020, up from $18.7 billion this year, according to a report from Javelin Strategy & Research. Browser-based and in-app mobile payments, however, will dwarf that number, reaching $318.8 billion, nearly doubling 2016’s $161.3 billion. • Movie-ticketing platform Atom Tickets will integrate JPMorgan Chase & …

After PayPal Holdings Inc. in July signed a sweeping agreement with Visa Inc., and in September reached a similar deal with MasterCard Inc., giving PayPal access to the card networks’ token engines and thereby new access to the physical point of sale, observers wondered when the other shoe would drop. It dropped …