This Policy Briefing is concerned with opportunities and obstacles arising from business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. Many development institutions hope that its spread will improve trade prospects for producers in developing countries. The expectation is that B2B e-commerce will provide: 1. better information on final markets 2. direct access to customers (taking out the intermediaries) 3. higher incomes. The basic idea is simple: the Internet provides an open global network and access to this network is relatively cheap. This has led to claims that Internet-based e-commerce will grow rapidly and help producers in developing countries to overcome problems of exclusion from the world economy and improve the terms of their participation.