NextCard

www.nextcard.com

Although investors haven’t been so enthusiastic of late, the startup’s stock trades at a 20% premium to its May 99 IPO value, NextCard continues to push forward on a number of fronts.

On Aug. 23, the company showed its Web savvy by repositioning its customer data in the same way Amazon.com displays its top selling products. The eCommerce Index provides a running list of the most popular ecommerce sites as measured by its cardholder spending (see screenshot upper right). Not only is the data interesting, it’s being used in The Industry Standard and Yahoo! Life, drawing publicity for NextCard month after month. Very smart.

NextCard’s eCommerce Index includes rank, 1 month movement, and 3-month movement, along with short comments.

On Sept. 17, the company’s previously announced acquisition of Textron National Bank (Costa Mesa, CA; $2.7 million in assets) was finalized and the bank’s name changed to NextBank. The new banking operation did not have a Web site at press time.

Contact: Dan Singer is Marketing Dir., Richard Goebel is Dir. Biz Development, (415) 284-9217.

NextCard Allows Online Payment

NextCard users can now pay their card bill online via ACH. For security reasons, two service levels are offered: (1) ClickPay allows users to pay up to $500 each month; the first payment can be made immediately by simply entering checking account and routing numbers. (2) ClickPayPlus has no cap on monthly payments, but requires users to enter their bank’s name, address, and phone number and wait five to seven days for verification. The NextCard system allows payments from multiple checking accounts, selected from a drop-down box.