Smartphones are where much of the potential is, capitalizing on consumers’ increasing comfort with using phones or an app to settle a restaurant bill, book a car or quickly send money to a friend.

PayPal has had a lot of success in this direction with Braintree, which PayPal owns, and which companies like Uber use to accept payments. Worldpay recently announced an effort to begin taking payments in virtual-reality games and stores.

JPMorgan, more than many other banks, has been particularly keen to build up its payment business. Its goal has been to have a hand in the payments infrastructure from start to finish, giving it greater power in the marketplace while potentially streamlining the experience for banks, sellers and shoppers.

While the biggest fight in the business is over smartphone payments and online purchases, JPMorgan has also been among the big banks trying to make inroads against peer-to-peer services like Venmo — an important market serving people who want to send one another money. JPMorgan has partnered with more than a dozen companies to set up Zelle to compete with Venmo.

Some of what is driving the interest is the threat presented by newer payment services like Apple Pay, or services like PayPal or Europe’s Klarna. Services like these can develop into a main point of contact with individual customers, potentially usurping traditional banks.

A Worldpay deal with Vantiv would expand the geographic footprint of Cincinnati-based Vantiv, which provides payment and technology services to merchants and financial institutions in the United States. A deal with JPMorgan Chase would bolster the processing power of the bank’s credit and debit cards business.

The potential offers follow an increase in deals in the sector in recent years.

In 2015, Visa paid 21.2 billion euros, or about $24 billion at current exchange rates, to acquire its former unit Visa Europe from an association of European banks and other payment service providers. The transaction was intended to expand Visa’s international reach and allow the payment network to better compete with Mastercard, which had integrated its European operations.