Shares in Freeserve, Britain's leading internet service provider, received a much needed fillip yesterday after the company announced a joint venture with Barclays Bank to set up a portal for small businesses.

The venture will be 60% owned by Freeserve and 40% by Barclays. It aims to provide online advice on everything from net name registration to employment issues. If successful, the portal may be floated separately.

Freeserve shares have taken a bruising since rivals such as AltaVista and NTL sought to increase market share by launching unmetered internet access.

Faced with the loss of telephone call revenues from matching such offers, Freeserve is under increasing pressure to provide more revenue-earning content. The deal with Barclays improved the Freeserve share price by 22.5p to 538.5p, still well below the 920p achieved at the beginning of the month. Barclays shares rose 17p to £16.65.

Freeserve and Barclays will each plough £10m into the small business portal in the first year. Barclays claims to be Britain's largest internet bank with 100,000 of its 450,000 small business customers on line. Freeserve estimates it has 300,000 small business users.

John Pluthero, chief executive of Freeserve, said: "Freeserve has a good reach among small businesses and with the Barclays brand we have a powerful combination."

The joint venture will launch in May and will offer advertising and e-commerce. Other services will include advice on accounting, sales and marketing, payroll control, law and online access to account information for Barclays customers.

• Britain's biggest building society, Nationwide, will put 250 terminals in branches so that customers can try internet banking free of charge. They will allow customers to register, carry out transactions or just see a demonstration.

Nationwide's online service, set up in 1997, offers mortgages, loans and credit cards. Customers can manage accounts, pay bills and set up standing orders.