Web authentication and trust services company VeriSign will receive a promotional boost from a marketing and investment agreement with online and wireless payment technology company eONE Global, through terms of a deal inked this week by the companies.
In addition to making a promised $20 million equity investment in Napa, Calif.-based eONE Global, VeriSign will promote the company’s SurePay Web payment products. VeriSign — which is best known for its Web certificates that authenticate the origin of online content — will market the online payment products to B2B exchanges, businesses and financial institutions.
In return, Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign also gets some sizable promotional opportunities from eONE Global. eONE will recommend VeriSign’s PayFlow managed payment services product to its online merchant clients, and VeriSign’s managed payment gateway will become the premier payment gateway offering of eONE Global’s SurePay unit.
“eONE Global’s focus is accelerating the development and adoption of new payment technologies — that’s what this agreement with VeriSign is all about,” said eONE Global president and chief executive Garen Staglin.
But the juiciest part of the deal for VeriSign it that it can tap the resources of eONE’s corporate parent, e-commerce and payment services giant First Data Corp. For one thing, eONE Global will market VeriSign’s managed payment gateway product to First Data’s financial institution clients, and its other distribution partners.
That’s significant news for VeriSign — Atlanta-based First Data has relationships with 2.5 million merchant locations and more than 1,400 card issuers.
“By leveraging the combined strengths of VeriSign and eONE Global, backed by First Data Corp., customers will be able to leverage a highly scalable solution set for Internet authentication, payments and transaction validation,” said VeriSign president and CEO Stratton Sclavos.
VeriSign also agreed to integrate First Data’s 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.
That, in turn, is a sizable boon for First Data: VeriSign last year bought Internet domain name registrar Network Solutions, the market leader and a one-time legal monopoly, in a $21 billion deal.
“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,” said First Data chairman and CEO Ric Duques. “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.”
