New law prohibits Visa/MC from processing for gambling in US
In case you haven't already heard, the loser Republicans just stuck some language into a bill having nothing to do with gambling or finance that makes it illegal for Visa and Mastercard to process for gambling sites.
While I am personally no fan of online gambling, it is really frightening to see that the loser Republicans can simply, with a little bit of language stuck into some other bill, wipe out an entire industry overnight. The scary part is that they did their dirty work by aiming at the card associations (processing companies), not at the gambling sites themselves.
I remember talk of Epassporte being prohibited momentarily from processing transactions from Chase because Chase tried to argue that Epassporte was only used for gambling. That got overthrown, but it is a little scary how vulnerable not just gambling or adult, but MANY industries would be to a similar sort of random prohibition.
It will be interesting to see if there's any plausible constitutional argument that could be invoked to try and overturn this. Of course, given the loser Republican appointees to the Supremes, not likely there'll be much help there either.
WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The costs of policing a new U.S. Internet gambling ban for banks and credit card companies will be determined by regulators in the coming months, industry officials said on Monday.
Government officials are expected to propose a "coding-and-blocking" system that will identify and stop payment to online gambling sites, experts said. Many banks and credit card companies already voluntarily block Internet gambling transactions using such a system.
The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Board have nine months to draft regulations after the new law, included in a package of port security measures passed by Congress on Friday and expected to be signed into law by President George W. Bush.
U.S. banks and credit card companies are optimistic that officials will prepare a workable system.
