Mountain View and Napa, CAApril 6, 2001 Internet trust services company VeriSign Inc., and eONE Global LP, a provider of payment technologies for Internet and wireless applications, today announced that they have signed a strategic agreement to co-market each other's products and services as well as co-develop solutions to increase secure payment options for a broad range of businesses engaged in e-commerce. As part of the overall agreement, and to cement the alliance, VeriSign intends to make a $20 million equity investment in eONE Global and its SurePay business.
VeriSign and eONE Global, through eONE's operating company SurePay, LP, will integrate their respective B2B solutions to deliver and co-market an offering via SurePay's patent-pending payment solution to B2B exchanges, enterprises and financial institutions, and will jointly market VeriSign's PayFlow managed payment services to online merchants. SurePay, an Internet gateway services provider for First Data Corp., will market VeriSign's managed payment gateway, as SurePay's premier payment gateway offering, to First Data's financial institution clients and other distribution partners.
As the majority owner of eONE Global, e-commerce and payment services company First Data has relationships with 2.5 million merchant locations and more than 1,400 card issuers. Additionally, VeriSign will integrate First Data's patented VirtualApp technology, an online merchant account application and decisioning tool, into its merchant payments platform, and will also market First Data's payment processing services to its customers, including its substantial domain name customer base.
Ric Duques, chairman and CEO of First Data and chairman of the eONE Global board, said, "What's most important here is that leading industry players are coming together, bringing their respective 'best-in-class' offerings to fuel both the growth of the business to business as well as online commerce between merchants and consumers. Instead of searching for what is the 'right' solution, those financial institutions and third-party providers, we believe, will have unquestionably the leading 'industry' solution."
