Albany Software, the UK-based electronic commerce software developer, has launched Albany eBank, an integrated software application that it claims will help companies reduce the costs of cross-border payments to the levels of domestic payments.

The solution is timely, given the European Commission's stipulation that a Europe-wide system for low value, cross-border payments must be in place by June 2003. Under the new regulation, banks will be forced to charge only around €0.01 per transaction, compared with present levels of about €24 ($23).