Sketchy details of the plans were released as Egg unveiled its preliminary results for the year to 2001. The online bank, which moved into France through the acquisition of Zebank last month, has narrowed full-year losses to £87.8 million, from £93.2 million in the previous year.

Introducing the results, Paul Gratton, Egg CEO says: “Egg has built a significant and sustainable business in the UK, and achieved substantial growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace. We remain committed to delivering long-term value to shareholders through building an international business of scale and leading the industry for innovation in financial services."

Pointing to Egg's alliance with Microsoft to offer investment products to continental European consumers through MSN, as an example, Gratton says the bank has extended the agreement to cover digital payments services to UK hotmail users.

An Egg spokesperson says the proposed service will cover e-mail-based person-to-person and business-to-consumer payments, including online bill payments. He says the plans are well-progressed, but would give no firm schedule for launch.

Gratton says: “Egg remains firmly committed to leveraging the opportunities presented in the digital financial services marketplace. We are encouraged by consumers increasing rates of adoption of technology for managing and investing their money. In addition to the digital payments offering we intend to launch shortly with Microsoft, we will also be launching our aggregation service.”

Egg has been a long-term advocate for the introduction of account aggregation, but has kept its powder dry while the industry and regulators deliberated the legal and security issues involved. Earlier plans to launch were put on the backburner in the furore which followed the introduction by Citibank of the UK's first aggregation service. Citi found its service boycotted by rival banks amid fears over consumer privacy and security issues. The UK payments body Apacs has since issued agreed guidelines for data sharing between banks offering aggregation services.

Egg, which celebrated its first ever quarterly profit in December 2001, says it passed another milestone this month with the acquisition of two million customer accounts. Egg says it added 82,000 new customers in the year to February 2001, taking total customer numbers past the two million mark for the first time. In total the bank acquired 600,000 net new customers last year. While the credit card business continues to grow - giving the bank four per cent UK marketshare within two years of launch - Egg is warning of further net outflows in savings as it continues to reduce its headline rates of interest.

To further its ambitions in the investment market, Egg has also acquired Fundsdirect, an online fund supermarket, which it intends to merge with Egg Invest. Egg Invest has had a "satisfactory year", says the bank, with 37,000 customers at end December and approximately £130 million invested. Egg says the merger will combine Egg Invest's digital service capability and consumer offering with Fundsdirect’s proven ability to serve the B2B marketplace. The net assets of Fundsdirect at 31 December 2001 were £2.7 million.