Netpayments cuts staff and goes virtual

Banks making it hard to survive, says MD

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Small Biz, 24th June 2003 13:46 GMT

Free whitepaper – Hands on with Hyper-V 3.0 and virtual machine movement

UK online payment services firm Netpayments has been forced to lay off more than half its workers.

Seven out of 11 employees lost their jobs at the start of this month after Netpayments' revenues fell below expectation.

Company founder and managing director Mike Foster told us the cuts were made as part of a restructuring planned to turn the firm into a virtual payment services provider.

Foster blamed the company's woes on unfair competition from major banks. He has written to the Prime Minister to complain that the UK banks run a "closed shop" for payment services that makes it hard for independent firms to survive.

The realignment of Netpayments' business and a move of its servers recently made it difficult to contact the firm for two weeks. Foster said that Netpayments is now operating normally, albeit with a revised business model and fewer staff. ®