Fleet to Process Card Purchases, Create Entrepreneur Web Sites

National banks may operate Web sites and process credit card purchases over the Internet as a service for small-business customers, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

OCC Chief Counsel Julie L. Williams in a speech last week said the agency on March 5 approved a request by Fleet Financial Group Inc. for storefronts fleet. For a fee, Boston-based Fleet creates Web sites that small-business customers can use to sell products to consumers. Fleet processes the credit card purchases and deposits the receipts in the small- business customer's account.

Begun as a pilot in the Northeast, Fleet expects to roll out the service nationwide this year. The bank wanted the OCC's approval before expanding the program.

Ms. Williams in an interview described the Fleet program as an "incremental advance" because it puts several banking services into a single package.

Fleet charges setup fees up to $1,495 and a monthly charge up to $249, depending on how many products are sold on the site, a bank spokesman said. Fleet also charges standard credit card processing fees. Roughly 100 businesses are participating and another 500 have applied, he said.

"Banks have historically played the role of bringing together parties who then negotiate and complete a transaction between themselves," Ms. Williams said last week at a conference sponsored by Glasser Legal Works in Little Falls, N.J. "The Fleet letter represents one such situation where we have a high-tech functional equivalent of a long-recognized permissible bank function."

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