Confirmed: Visa declining US egaming payments too UPDATED 05/02/2010

Jon Parker

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, EGRmagazine.com has now confirmed, with 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. However eGaming Review has now confirmed that these too are subject to the ban. 

Repeated attempts to use a US-registered Visa card by an eGaming Review reporter 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.” 

However the US poker giant stressed that unlike many egaming sites, PokerStars never codes '7995'  online gambling transactions as other forms of e-commerce, and that it offers alternative payment means for US customers whose credit cards are rejected.

The company said: "PokerStars does not, nor ever has engaged in the practices of 'mis-coded' crdit card transactions. We have therefore been unaffected by any crackdown by Visa or Mastercard to close down such 'mis-coded' accounts. We allow the issuing bank to decide whether the transaction should be approved or declined according to the correct coding of that transaction as 7995. The only way that PokerStars is affected by credit card declines is when issuing banks in the United States (or indeed any other country) decide that they will decline 7995 coded transactions. In such instances it is company policy to provide the player with an alternative payment method."

The 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 this year to comply.
  

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Posted: 05/02/2010