The solution offers small and medium enterprises, commerce providers, systems integrators and developers turn-key access to credit card processing capabilities for Visa, MasterCard and Maestro cards in Euros and Pound Sterling. The SMB solution already supports more than 17,000 merchants and partners in Canada.

"Whether you are an independent e-merchant or a commerce provider in need of payment processing capabilities, our SMB Payments solution can be plugged into your commerce platform to increase speed to market and revenue while reducing the risks and complexities associated with processing payments on a global basis," said Souheil Badran, senior vice president and general manager of Digital River World Payments.

Platform-agnostic and built on an open architecture for easy integration, the Digital River SMB Payments solution offers several benefits for companies conducting business in the U.K., including the ability to:

• Quickly set up and start processing online payments in the U.K. through an automated application process;
• Access expert support staff who are knowledgeable in local and global payment requirements;
• Leverage payments tools that include recurring billing, batch processing, data import services, virtual terminal, tokenization, fraud and authentication tools, and a developer portal; and
• Seamlessly scale from a SMB to an enterprise solution as payment volumes grow.

"Getting a merchant account and gateway set up for your website can be quite difficult, but with Digital River I was taken through every step of the process by their hands-on sales team," said Chris Williams, owner of Dark Prism Accessories, a quality alternative jewellery and accessories shop. "They made it easy and simple to go from my initial application through approval and go-live."

Recently, Volusion, an e-commerce provider for small and medium enterprises, integrated the Digital River SMB Payments solution with its commerce platform. The integration is designed to enable independent operators of Volusion e-shops to quickly launch online card processing capabilities in the U.K.

"We are looking forward to working with Digital River and expanding our payments portfolio with services that are localized for the U.K. market," said David House, director of U.K. sales at Volusion. "This enhanced functionality will help our customers drive sales."

"The combination of our payments capabilities with Volusion's commerce platform creates a pairing that nicely complements the core competencies that each company brings to the integration," said Badran. "We plan to continue to leverage this partner-centric integration strategy to create new opportunities across the U.K. as well as other geographies."

In addition to its stand-alone SMB Payments solution, Digital River offers small and medium enterprises international payment processing services as an integrated part of its MyCommerce™ solution. Based on a do-it-yourself model, MyCommerce provides independent businesses with a variety of affordable, global, cloud-based commerce options to support the online sales of digital products.