Bermuda-based First Atlantic Commerce (FAC) is providing payment processing services for the republic of Sao Tome and Principe m, the company has revealed.

Sao Tome is a republic in the Gulf of Guinea, off the west coast of Africa, comprising two main islands and several inlets. Its population was a little over 125,000 in 1993. It won its independence from Portugal in 1975.

FAC is a developer and provider of secure, real-time e-commerce payment solutions and other e-commerce services. It is providing the payment processing service for NIC.ST, the official registration company of the Sao Tome top-level country domain.

NIC.ST, operated by Swedish Internet service provider Bahnhof, provides customers with a top-level domain for an annual fee similar to the way Network Solutions operates the registration services offered by INTERNIC. The .ST domain (Bermuda's is .bm), which will be marketed as "The SiTe Domain'', is expected to become one of the Internet's leading top level domains.

"The global Internet community already interprets .ST as short for SiTe. This meaning is well established with thousands of already existing domain-holders in countries all over the world,'' said Oscar Swartz, president, Bahnhof Internet. "We selected FAC to provide e-commerce services to our NIC.ST site, because we were impressed by the company's expertise in offshore e-commerce, secure payment solutions and ease of implementation,'' he added. "FAC offered us an affordable and effective e-commerce solution and we are confident in FAC's ability to handle our high velocity transaction processing requirements.'' Andrea Wilson, senior vice president of FAC, said: "By outsourcing transaction processing services, NIC.ST can focus on their primary objectives, which are providing domain registration services and building the .ST Internet infrastructure. Our modular approach to e-commerce services gives NIC.ST the flexibility they need to get to market quickly and easily add more services as their business grows.''