PayPal has acquired its second startup in as many days, as the payments giant announced today that it was snapping up machine learning-powered fraud detection startup Simility. The transaction is valued at $120 million, in what will be an all-cash deal. The news comes two days after PayPal bought out payments startup Hyperwallet in a $400 million deal. Founded in 2014, Palo Alto-based Simility leverages machine learning to help those working in the fraud detection sphere collect and analyze data. The platform is designed to prevent myriad kinds of fraud, such as account takeover (ATO), where a bad actor tries to gain access to another person's online account. In such a scenario, Simility looks at various session, device, and behavioral biometrics and builds a profile for what constitutes "normal" user login behavior; if an anomaly is spotted, it can act to prevent the action.

The company announced it has received €30 million ($36 million) funding from the European Investment Bank, the lending arm of the European Union. "We're proud to receive this stamp of approval from the EIB. It's the type of offer you can't refuse and it will allow us to further accelerate our growth and continue to level the playing field for small businesses, giving them access to tools to take on the big corporations," said Jacob de Geer, CEO and co-founder of iZettle, in a statement. The funding follows the startup's most recent round, which was earlier this year, when it raised $63 million at the same $500 million valuation it had in its last equity round. It appears the valuation is staying the same with this latest round: the money, as with earlier this year, is coming in the form of debt funding and will be distributed over the next three years, the company said.

Swedish payment terminal company iZettle has won €30 million (£26.6 million) in funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to explore artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for small businesses. AI and machine learning knowledge and technology are often geared towards big companies, and small businesses don't usually have the funds to develop solutions tailored to their needs. To tackle this problem, Stockholm-based iZettle plans to invest in research and development over the next three years, specifically to benefit smaller businesses. "We're proud to receive this stamp of approval from the EIB," said CEO and cofounder of iZettle Jacob de Geer. "It's the type of offer you can't refuse and it will allow us to further accelerate our growth and continue to level the playing field for small businesses, giving them access to tools to take on the big corporations," he said.

When you're a globe-spanning technology firm, you need to keep a paranoid eye on the competition. But sometimes it can be hard to work out what the competition is: disruption can come from the most unlikely corners. But even given that, Netflix has an odd definition of what it has to compete with. No, according to the company's chief executive, Reed Hastings, Netflix's biggest competitor is the pesky human need to close your eyes and sleep for a third of the day. Asked about the company's competitors at Netflix's earnings call, Hastings said that he isn't really concerned about Amazon and HBO "because the market is just so vast".