Avenues and City Union Bank announce tie-up to open up online shopping facility for CUB customers

9th April 2009 – Mumbai, India

Avenues India Pvt Ltd, South-Asia’s largest integrated e-commerce company is proud to announce that it now has 27 Indian banks in its direct debit engine. City Union Bank Ltd, one of the top banks in South India is the latest addition to its list of banks linked to its engine.

With this tie-up for the direct debit shopping facility with City Union Bank, CCAvenue will bring in lakhs of new customers for the eCommerce merchants who use the CCAvenue solution. This consolidates and maintains Avenues’ position as India’s largest and most comprehensive payment gateway.

“In the past 8 years, we have achieved great success, and we are proud to have built India’s largest direct debit engine, says Mr. Vishwas Patel, CEO of Avenues. “We plan to consolidate this milestone by further enhancing our solution by proactively adding more banks and payment options to our list.”

City Union Bank will also benefit with this tie-up. It will experience an increase in its brand value in the eyes of its customers, as it will now give the CUB customers easy access to shop at thousands of merchant websites using the CCAvenue solution. They will now be able to pay for products and services directly through their City Union bank accounts.

About City Union Bank Ltd
City Union Bank is a premier South Indian bank; earlier known as 'The Kumbhakonam Bank Ltd’ and is considered amongst the top banks in India. It was incorporated as a limited company on 31st October, 1904. The first branch of the Bank was opened at Mannargudi on 24th Jan 1930 and since then it has come a long way in customer satisfaction and service delivery. The Bank took over the assets and liabilities of the Commonwealth Bank Limited in 1957 at Aduthurai, Kodavasal, Valangaiman, Jayankondacholapuram and Ariyalur Branches. The City Forward Bank Limited and The Union Bank Limited were also amalgamated in April, 1965.

About Avenues
Incorporated in the year 2001, Avenues is South Asia’s largest payment gateway solution company powering thousands of eMerchants with eCommerce solutions and real time, multi-currency, multiple payment options online payment processing services. Avenues is headquartered in Mumbai, India and has subsidiary companies and offices in USA, Singapore and China. Avenues’ has developed several innovative, cutting-edge ASP hosted solutions that are used by thousands of eMerchants globally. Avenues’ has three Business Units namely– Avenues Commercial Services, Avenues Travel Industry Services and Avenues Community Related Services.

All Avenues' solutions are empowered with a complete PG solution that has the unique ability to offer the full spectrum of Internet payment options, including:

All types of Credit Card processing through Multiple Banks and Card Associations

Debit Card processing

Direct Debit to bank accounts of 26 Indian Banks, 20 Chinese Banks and 3 Singapore Banks

Mobile Payment Solutions via PayMate®

Cash Card Processing of ITZ Cash®

For more information, visit:
www.CCAvenue.com (for general eCommerce Processing),
www.ResAvenue.com (for Online Hotel Reservations through the Hotel website),
www.EventAvenue.com (for Online Event Management solution), www.HotelsAvenue.com (for Online Travel Inventory Solution).