Visa declining USA egaming payments
THE CRACKDOWN on US online gambling credit card payments that began on Wednesday is being operated by Visa as well as rival US credit card giant Mastercard, tens of thousands of US online gamblers likely to have been affected.
As reported yesterday, US-facing operators were hit by an overnight tightening of restrictions on the use of credit cards for egaming transaction ahead of the implementation of America’s Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) law on 1 June, which bans the facilitation of online gambling by banks and other payment companies.
The action was at the time of writing confirmed as applying to US-registered cards issued by Mastercard, but rumours that a crackdown had also been launched by Visa had not been substantiated.
Repeated attempts to use a US-registered Visa card on PokerStars last night were declined, with the American poker giant sending an email in response that read:
“Status: DECLINED.
“Your credit card transaction has been declined. If your credit card information was entered correctly and you have sufficient funds, your transaction was probably declined due to Internet gaming restrictions set by your credit card issuer.”
Other sites likely to have been hit by the action will include PokerStars arch rival FullTilt and US sports betting giant Sportsbook.com, which yesterday announced that it will leave the Cake Poker network to join that offered by Ireland's Merge Gaming.
UIGEA was originally supposed to have been enforced from 1 December 2009, although the US treasury later approved a delay allowing companies until 1 June 2009 to comply.
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