MasterCard stopping online gaming transactions: UIGEA closer to reality?

It certainly seems to be more bad news for U.S. players in February, as the MasterCard financial brand is now working harder to stop transactions between American citizens and the online casinos at which they seek to play.

The drastic solutions employed by MasterCard (and to some extent Visa as well) are a reaction to the current nigh-Prohibition status of online casino gaming in the United States currently. Chief among statutes is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), which calls on individual banks to take responsibility in disallowing transactions between individuals and online casinos; though UIGEA’s entrance into law has even been delayed by Washington lawmakers this year, most see it as the law of the land vis-a-vis online gaming.

Banks and other financial institutions, however, clearly do not have the staff or resources to take on what is essentially a task for proper law enforcement. So today MasterCard is attempting to stop such transactions one casino at a time via inspection of gaming transactions; casinos typically attempt to disguise the financial activity which happens between their outlet and customers for obvious reasons, i.e. UIGEA. Top names in the poker world such as Doyle’s Room and Bodog stopped taking Master Card one week ago and many customers at online casinos are sure to find a deposit impossible to make by a method they might have used painlessly in January.

And things may yet get even tougher; one industry follower stated that MasterCard’s move “is a sign that banks and payment companies are preparing for implementation of America’s Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which bans the facilitation of online gambling by payment companies.”

The apparent message to U.S. players: Better start looking into those alternate electronic payment solutions with gambling portals on LiveCasinoDirect.