Dublin payments software firm Valista has clinched a deal valued at €5-€10 million to provide its software to US internet giant AOL, writes Karlin Lillington.

Under the deal, AOL will use Valista's OffersPlus product to enable AOL to bundle together its premium products and services in a variety of targeted consumer offers. AOL will also use Valista's PaymentsPlus software to manage the purchasing and payments process.

"This is probably the biggest deal for us so far," said Mr Raomal Perera, Valista chief executive. "The credibility of having AOL as a customer has been very helpful for us."

Valista closed the deal in the first quarter of the year and Mr Perera said the company has signed other significant deals in the interim, including one in Latin America that he said cannot be announced yet.

Originally Network365, Valista was formed last year when Network365 acquired US-based payments firm iPin, which had already been in talks with AOL.

Mr Perera said a key purpose of the acquisition was to gain a foothold in the US market.

"At the time, it wasn't that clear that this deal was on the table," he said.

AOL came back to Valista to discuss its payments software and then became interested in the bundling product as well, he said.

OffersPlus allows merchants to offer a range of products and services as a bundle to mobile or online customers. It processes the customer's payment to the merchant and the merchant's payments to the companies that are providing the products and services.

"AOL's big challenge was that they have 23 million users and they have a lot of products they want to make available to that customer base.

"They started looking to us because they wanted to offer those products faster, but bundling is what got them really excited," said Mr Perera.

Mr Perera said that, as a result of the deal, Valista "has fallen into a really interesting space" where it can take services that were initially targeted primarily at the mobile content world into the online area as well.

Valista is also poised to do more deals in the US and Latin American market, Mr Perera said, after an initial focus on Europe and Asia.

Existing Valista customers include NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone UK, Orange, Tiscali, Wanado, 3 and T-Online.

Valista will not be seeking further funding at the moment said Mr Perera, but he is understood to want to take the company public.

Valista has been operating at a loss but expects to break even next year. In its 2002 accounts, the latest available for the company, it operated at a loss of some €3.5 million.