Participants on Young Enterprise's Company Programme, typically aged between 15 and19, set up and run their own business over the course of the academic year. This successful scheme gives young people the opportunity to realise their business ideas with professional support from Young Enterprise staff and local mentors.

A recent research study showed that students who get the chance to set up and run a profit-making enterprise in the classroom are 42% more likely to become company owners.
To support this programme, CashFlows partnered with Young Enterprise to enable their business for the first time to accept card payments directly from their website or over the phone by using CashFlows' payment processing services and innovative technology.

By taking advantage of these additional facilities, which include a hosted payment page, online store builder and Virtual Terminal for phone payments, Young Enterprise businesses are able to explore and capitalise on the continuing growth in e-commerce spending amongst UK consumers, which broke the £8bn barrier for the first time in November 2012 according to IMRG.

Nick Ogden, Chairman and founder of Cashflows and a Young Enterprise Alumni commented: "We are delighted to be supporting the businesses participating in Young Enterprise's Company programme and the young entrepreneurs behind them.

"Given the ever-increasing importance of e-commerce to a business' future success, CashFlows is pleased to offer our services to these exciting businesses. We look forward to developing our relationship with Young Enterprise further in the years to come as the growth of entrepreneurial business and skills are vital to our economy."

Michael Mercieca, CEO of Young Enterprise said: "Working with CashFlows enables Young Enterprise businesses to accept card payments from their website, which is an important step for many of the entrepreneurs and businesses we encourage and support."