New Site for Small Businesses in the Works

Visa U.S.A. and small-business exchange
operator Onvia.com Inc. , are teaming up
to create VisaBusiness.com, designed to help smaller companies use the Web
more effectively.

The new site, scheduled to go live this fall, will be designed specifically
to help smaller companies use the Web more effectively for buying and selling
products and services, the companies said.

The site will offer content for small businesses and leverage Onvia’s
exchange for business products and services, Web hosting, breaking news and
advice. Visa and Onvia will deliver additional value-added online offers
exclusively for Visa Business cardholders.

Visa said it will offer similar solutions to its member banks, empowering
them to
provide additional services to their small-business customers.

The deal also includes cooperation on new marketplaces, enabling payment
technologies, marketing programs to reach small businesses using the Visa
Business Card
and preferential presentation of the Visa payment solution on the Onvia.com
site. Financial arrangements between the two companies were not disclosed.

“Onvia is an entrepreneurial company that clearly excels in translating the
way small business owners conduct commerce in the physical world into the
digital world,” said Bond Issacson, president of e-Visa.

“This initiative
will give our member banks new opportunities to acquire small business
customers and provide their current customers with increased value,
especially in the areas of e-commerce and new channels of delivery.”

A division of Visa U.S.A., e-Visa was created to accelerate mass adoption of
electronic commerce and “to position Visa as the currency of the e-economy.”
The division consolidates all of Visa’s e-commerce aspects, including brand
marketing, processing systems, operations, business development and alliances
and partnerships into one unit.