Pietersen and Collingwood are set to cash in on the Stanford deal

England are set to confirm a multi- million pound deal with Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford to play five Twenty20 matches in the Caribbean.

The announcement will be made at Lord's on Wednesday, but the matches will no longer be winner-takes-all.

Each player on the winning team will earn �500,000, BBC Sport understands.

"There are very major rewards for winning and they are very much in that kind of area," said England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke.

What the ECB really wants is to use Stanford as a carrot to keep its players out of playing for the IPL Jonathan Agnew

"This match operates in dollars and the principle was the players have the opportunity to become dollar millionaires," he told BBC Radio Four's Today programme.

The matches will all take place at Sir Allen's private cricket ground in Antigua and will be between a West Indies All Star XI and England.

After months of negotiation, the dates will be confirmed at the news conference but it is expected the first match will take place on 1 November.

Sir Allen will attend the launch alongside Clarke, England coach Peter Moores, representatives of the West Indies Cricket Board and cricket legends Sir Ian Botham and Sir Viv Richards.

BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew said there was no way the deal would have ever been winner-takes-all.

606: DEBATE Give your reaction to the Stanford deal

He said: "There is not a professional sportsman on this planet with a short-term career who is going to fly to the other side of the world and play for nothing."

He added the ECB was really concerned some of its top names including Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff would be lured to play in the money-spinning Indian Premier League.

"What the ECB really wants is to use that as a carrot to keep its players out of playing for the IPL," said Agnew.

"They want to be able to keep some control over the England players, particularly next year when there's the Twenty20 World Cup and the Ashes."

The agreement is part of Sir Allen's ongoing initiative to try and reverse the decline of West Indies cricket. He has been bankrolling a local Twenty20 tournament in the Caribbean since 2006, with $2m prize money on offer.

On an international scale, he first offered a $5m (�2.5m) one-off winner-takes-all match to South Africa but they declined because the dates were impractical.

He then tried to entice India and doubled the prize money but they also refused.