OSAKA -- The Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday announced that it will set up an electronic commerce market on the Internet for small businesses in October, in cooperation with other regional chambers of commerce and industry.

What the chamber says will be Japan's largest business-to-business market will have two main sections -- one for merchandise trade and the other for exchanging technological information.

Participating companies, after registering and paying an initiation fee, can go to the site and post information on what they would like to buy and for how much. The payments will have to be settled by corporate credit cards issued by JCB Co., a major Japanese credit card company, the Osaka chamber said.

The site will be linked to the business mall site at www2.b-mall.ne.jp The site keeps a database on corporate information designed to support trade between small businesses.

The Osaka chamber has been running the business mall site since August 1999.