MasterCard, EC Cubed Plan B-to-B E-Commerce Initiative

MasterCard International and EC Cubed Inc., a provider of e-commerce
application components, signed an agreement to provide the enabling technology
for MasterCard’s business-to-business e-commerce infrastructure.

EC Cubed will work with
MasterCard to co-develop a range of
business-to-business e-commerce applications. Financial arrangements were not
disclosed.

The first joint initiative is the development of an open, Internet-based, data
capture system that supports MasterCard’s Corporate Purchasing Card. The
Corporate Purchasing Card helps organizations control spending and streamline
purchasing processes associated with authorizing, tracking and reconciling
business purchases.

EC Cubed’s application component suite, ecWorks, will provide the underlying
infrastructure needed to create an Internet “Commercial Card Gateway” through
which purchase order data is transmitted from any front-end electronic
procurement software solution to the MasterCard purchasing card system.

MasterCard said its Commercial Card Gateway will significantly extend its data
reporting capabilities, providing the corporate purchasing department with the
line-item, Level 3 data needed to better track and control enterprise-wide
spending via the Internet.
Companies can then use this detailed data for cardholder reconciliation and
general ledger accounting integration.

“We’ve found a technology approach that fits with our strategic
goal of offering a
turnkey solution for Internet-enabled purchasing that delivers line item data
to corporate buyers without the need for merchants to invest in changing their
payment infrastructure to accommodate Level 3 processing,” said Steve Abrams, senior vice president of U.S. Corporate Products at
MasterCard.

MasterCard said it will pilot the Commercial Card Gateway internally, before
extending it to member banks as a commercial solution later this year.

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