"We're extremely excited to be able to integrate Signio's robust payment processing solution into QuickBooks and believe its will play a key role in our new small business e-services gateway," said Dan Nye, Intuit vice president of Internet Small Business. "Our strategy is to provide extensive tools and resources our customers need to run their business better and smarter. With Signio's technology, we can provide small business owners with a new capability."

"Intuit is leading the way with its integrated small business e-services strategy and connected products and services," said Philippe Courtot, Chairman and CEO of Signio. "It's an exciting time in the small business e-commerce space and Signio is thrilled to be a part of such an important initiative that brings the power of the Internet to millions of small business owners."

The new payment enabled QuickBooks Merchant Account, to be publicly released in early 2000, will link QuickBooks small business owners to a resource that will help them easily and efficiently conduct financial transactions and purchasing via the Internet. The Signio service has been tightly integrated, ensuring that the QuickBooks user experience is maintained throughout the entire application, making it easy to use and manage.

Signio's payment platform harnesses the power of the Internet to deliver a robust, easy to deploy and cost effective e-commerce payment solution to on-line merchants, merchant aggregators, business exchanges and buyer and seller communities. Signio offers consolidated payment services for credit cards, debit cards and Internet checks for a monthly flat fee. Automated clearinghouse (ACH) transactions are also available through the Signio service. Unlike other HTTP based payment solutions, Signio's TCP/IP based service maintains the data during the entire process, guaranteeing a risk and trouble free transaction.