forces with Chicago-based application developer Totally Secure Transactions Inc. to provide safe e-commerce gateways.

And that move could attract more electronic business to Bermuda's virtual shores, First Atlantic's senior vice president Andrea Wilson said yesterday.

Wholesale Internet access provider StarNet, which supports more than 500 Internet service providers in the US and Canada, has already signed up.

The joint venture means a new settlement service for electronic transactions will be available to those 500 ISPs, allowing domestic or international payment settlement for Internet merchants.

Ms Wilson explained that the more Internet businesses using First Atlantic's services for payment settlement, the "more First Atlantic is positioned to promote Bermuda's e-commerce industry''.

"First Atlantic's goal is to make it simple for companies like StarNet to offer their Internet service provider customers the option of offshore transactions on settlement through our services such as cGate Secure which a is a powerful server-to-server data encryption technology.'' Totally Secure Transactions CEO Tom King said in a statement yesterday: "Our partnership with First Atlantic will allow StarNet's ISP customers to take advantage of our combined unique services, and the cost-benefits of secure transaction settlement.''