VeriSign Inc., which has been aggressively launching new products in the past few months, delivered a new payment services platform that lets international ISPs deliver co-branded online payment services to merchants doing business in all parts of the globe.

The move expands the Mountain View, Calif.-based digital trust and payment services company's secure payment services efforts to include Asia, Australia, Europe and South America as well as North America.

Nine international service providers are signed on at launch, including CIBC, eSign, Firstream, Paymon, TrustAsia and VeriPay, among others.

"Merchants around the world share a common need -- a payment solution that provides real-time connectivity to regional payment processors," said Anil Pereira, senior vice president and group general manager for the Enterprise and Service Provider Division at VeriSign. "We selected nine new affiliates to supplement our payment platform with their core competencies to provide a superior service to merchants worldwide."

VeriSign, which earlier this month launched a new suite of e-commerce solutions aimed at the small- and medium-sized business market, has quietly been moving former CyberCash clients to its own payment services operation. The company is also branching out to the telecom and wireless realm with its planned acquisition of Illuminet.

VeriSign said the new international payments platform offers secure, redundant, high-speed connectivity to payment processors; real-time authorization response; connectivity to credit card, purchase card, Internet check and ACH processing networks in the U.S. and connectivity to specific local processing partners for each affiliate, supporting payment types that are used in their region; pre-integration into more than 70 e-commerce applications; and storage of transaction history.