MasterCard Moves Forward with Online Gambling Ban

Submitted by Evan on Tue, 2010-03-02 at 20:50

MasterCard has begun their campaign to block payments made to online casinos. They have been threatening to do it for some time now and the final decision was made recently. The company has a list of red flags for employees to watch out for and anything that is questionable will be blocked until an investigation is completed.

The problem for players and online casinos is that the transaction is frozen and investigated after it has gone through. Therefore, casino operators are receiving the money and then running into the problem of it being frozen. The problem is that while under investigation, operators have no idea when the funds will be released to them, if they are being returned to the customer or seized by MasterCard. Players also run into a problem because they are unable to use the funds that they have deposited.

In response to this, operators are scrambling to find new methods of payment for their players to use. Paying with credit cards was one of the easiest and most effective methods and although there are plenty of other payment options, most of them require a certain amount of time to allow the transaction to go through.

Online casino operators are looking for loopholes in the rules that ban MasterCard transactions to see if there is some way they can still be processed. However, those who decide to keep using this method potentially set themselves up to lose these funds.