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Ariba gains after American Express, Verisign deal

Ariba, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARBA) continued its ascent Monday, after announcing a deal with American Express Company (NYSE: AXP) and VeriSign Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN). The deal will deliver integrated credit card payments for online business-to-business transactions.

Shares were up 10 1/8 to 80 5/8 or 14 percent Monday; the stock has been reviving with other B2B shares, such as PurchasePro (Nasdaq: PPRO) and VerticalNet (Nasdaq: VERT), which had taken a slide along with other techs over valuation concerns.

VeriSign shares were down 7/8 to 181 1/2, and American Express shares fell 1 3/8 to 55 1/8 .

As part of the deal, the financial terms of which were not released, Ariba will integrate VeriSign's B2B connectivity services with the Ariba Commerce Services Network to process American Express payments.

Ariba will provide buyers and suppliers with the ability to exchange and process American Express payments electronically, which will further reduce the costly extra steps and manual processes involved. The new payment technology will also reduce process time for buyers and sellers.

To deliver the new integrated technology, the companies expect to create a new cXML standard that provides encrypted processing of charge cards using VeriSign's "XML Pay'' schema, the companies said.