Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel, has supplied an undisclosed amount to Firstgate Holding, the owner of an online payment system dubbed "ClickandBuy". ClickandBuy currently has only about 7,000 users - with the extra capital the company will be able to expand into Asia and Latin America. ClickandBuy"s payment system can handle many different currencies, various tax schemes, credit card processing and live customer care. The system also protects customers and merchants against Internet fraud.
Competition for Paypal and Google Checkout? Not exactly. Apple"s iTunes store, Skype, Financial Times Deutschland and The Independent (U.K. newspaper) currently use ClickandBuy. According to Intel Capital, ClickandBuy has recently experienced rapid growth due to better bandwidth availability which leads to more downloads of content like music and video. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than $6 billion in companies around the world.