Flooz.com, the online gift voucher company, is planning to launch in Britain after talking with some 15 retailers in the UK, including Harrods and Tower Records.
The planned launch of Flooz.co.uk reflects the continuing ambitions of online payment companies in the US.
A number of firms are fighting a crisis of confidence among e-commerce investors as well as doubts about the viability of their systems to offer payment alternatives to credit cards online.
Flooz.com, launched with an advertising blitz featuring Whoopi Goldberg, who is also a shareholder and one of the sector's best-known names.
The firm markets itself as a virtual gift service at which customers buy "credit" from the website using a credit card and send it to someone else via email. The recipient of the gift, or "stored value" in industry parlance, can spend it with more than 60 online retailers.
British consumers can already shop at a handful of British companies, such as Whittards of Chelsea and Thomas Pink, using credit denominated in pounds rather than dollars. The launch of a British service next year will allow them to use their accounts at many more locations.
Robert Levitan, chief executive of the New York-based company, admits that it has reined in its original international ambitions.
"We were on a faster track and then we decided to stop and take the right partners," he said. "We want to do it properly, and we don't want to be the arrogant Americans who think we know it all."
As well as negotiating with retailers, the company is also talking to distributors and prospective employees. The cost of the entire venture will run into several million dollars.
Analysts are sceptical about the future for online payment systems, in spite of the signs of caution. James van Dyke, a senior analyst at Jupiter Communications, said: "There have been several so-called stored value currencies which have tried to make a go of it over the years - and it has been a tough ride. It's a momentous thing to change payment behaviour."
Mr van Dyke and other analysts refer to a roster of companies forced in the past to retreat from ambitious plans to offer incentive-based, or promotional, currencies.
At the beginning of the internet frenzy companies such as DigiCash, CyberCash and First Virtual Holdings all introduced online incentive-based currencies with limited success.
The internet gold rush encouraged other companies to set up online-based currencies in spite of these failures. Beenz.com already offers an international online currency, while Webcertificates.com, Netcentives.com and MyPoints.com all compete in the same space. Jomono.com is Britain's version of Flooz.com.
"If the goal was to become a standard currency on the internet, none of them have been successful," said Mr van Dyke
The difficulty of establishing a trading currency is not new. The historic nature of incentive programmes was given a new twist last month when Netcentives, a Nasdaq-listed company, teamed up with the Sperry and Hutchinson company, the original purveyor of offline rewards.
S&H Greenpoints.com is the web version of a company which began operations more than 100 years ago before running into financial difficulties during the 1980s.
Mr Levitan, a 38-year-old who also co-founded iVillage, the online site for women, is unfazed by the industry's lack of obvious success to date. "We will succeed if we are the best way to give and receive a gift online," he said.
More than 600,000 people have sent or received Flooz vouchers worth about $5m so far. The private firm, which is still not profitable, is keen to expand its corporate client base, which provides about half of its sales. The idea is for clients such as Cisco Systems and Eastman Kodak to give their employees Flooz credit to spend as an incentive rather than simply putting more money in their wage packet.
Mr Levitan also believes that the companies could work together, as they trade in slightly different currencies. When he talks of Jomono, for example, he says: "They could be a competitor or a partner. It's really too early to tell."
