Mondex, the MasterCard-owned developer of cashless smart card systems, is teaming up with beenz.com, the virtual currency innovator, to create a range of e-commerce services based on a single card.

The two companies see themselves as different but complementary.

Mondex provides cash in electronic form, generally used in high volume, low value payments. beenz was designed as a universal web currency that can be offered as an incentive to visit sites or buy online. As with other incentive programmes, once a customer accumulates a sufficient amount, it can be exchanged for a wide range of goods and services.

Mondex and beenz plan to work together on both technology and marketing strategy. Their plan is to develop a card-based transaction system that will work equally well in the real and virtual worlds.

Elliott Chase