For years, one of the most common ways to deposit money into the online casinos for United States based customers has been, credit card! Mastercard is cracking down on online gamers and the operators of the industry. Mastercard has made their processing more difficult in cutting down on operators “cheating” on their coding. Companies would use other names to hide the proof that a gamer is depositing money for gaming purposes. All of this is part of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act or UIGEA for short. What this act does is makes it illegal to “facilitate” online gambling. Congress originally had plans for this to take effect in 2009, but they gave an extension.
What this action will do for online gaming is put more on the shoulders of the secondary depositing methods. Most online casinos provide other avenues to deposit money that will now become much more popular. Some examples would include Poker Echecks, EwalletXpress and Entropay. These types of services typically issue electronic checks through your “online wallet”.
It is unsure at this point what casinos will be impacted most by this action. Companies could be forced to shut down if they continue with the illegal action. The law has been enforced after the case in which Douglas Rennick was accused of taking in over $350m from online gaming. Rumor has it that credit card powerhouse, Visa, has also been working on shutting down US credit card deposits as well.
Online Casinos always seem to find a way around these type of “limitations”. Most companies are probably scrambling to figure out how they will get their US base to deposit money into their system. One this is for sure, they will find a way! Stay tuned here at CasinoShark.com for the latest on this issue, as there is certainly more to come.