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Credit Card Refusing To Pay Online Gambling
by Jerry "Jet"
Whittaker
May 23, 2006
Players wager billions of dollars online every year.
Almost all bets are funded, at least at first, by credit
cards. Companies like Visa get a part of the action
every time their cards are used, without risking a
player getting a hot streak. Yet players are finding it
more and harder to make a deposit, let alone an actual
wager, on a gaming website using their credit cards. The
largest banks, comprising of Citibank, Bank of America
and Wells Fargo, will not let their credit cards be used
for online gaming. But the situation got by a long way
worse for Internet gambling when the lesser known, but
more daring, financial institutions that dominate the
credit card field also backed off. MBNA, Capital One and
even Providian Financial, one of the biggest issuers of
credit cards with 18 million card holders, are
automatically declining to process transactions from
online gaming merchants.
More about the credit card facilities
The Card shall not be used for payment of any gambling
transaction or other transaction which is illegal
beneath applicable laws and the Bank reserves the right
to decline processing or paying any Card Transaction
which it suspects to be a gambling or illegal
transaction. This is not actually a surprise.
Traditional banks have in the past been very
conservative by nature. The anti-O.C. laws were enacted
when Nevada was the only state with casinos and legal
sports books. No one thought about the opportunity of
legal and quasi-legal gambling sweeping the nation and
the world, with players making bets with credit cards.
Conclusion
Visa and MasterCard have so far runaway liability under
RICO for allowing their cards to be used for online
gaming. In fact, very few people in the world have lost
civil suits, let alone been illegally convicted, for
being involved in Internet gambling. Credit card
companies also have the false fear of losing money in a
straight line with these transactions.
Gambling debts,
even money owed licensed casinos, are not typically
legally enforceable. If a player uses his credit card to
get gaming chips, he may not have to disburse the bill
when it arrives in the mail. The credit card issued with
the Caesars Palace logo specially states that it cannot
be used for gambling.
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