Mastercard Blocks American Online Poker Deposits
Paul Sandells
Monday 8th February 2010

mastercard As if playing online poker wasn’t difficult enough for most residents of the United States, things got a little tougher today as credit card giants, Mastercard, blocked deposits by players. Mastercard has apparently figured out how some gaming sites were manipulating the coding, to previously allow transactions to go through, and have now blocked the process.

Now the major online poker rooms including Doylesroom, Bodog, Absolute Poker, and UltimateBet no longer list Mastercard as an option in their cashiers.

Mastercard have previously worked out the “gambling deposit loophole” only for sites to find a work-around and offer the method again within a few months.

It’s uncertain if that will happen again and, for the time being, Mastercard using poker players are left in limbo.

Visa, Mastercard’s main rival, are yet to find a way to block the deposit process and that credit card remains one of the main ways for gamblers to deposit into sites in the USA.

UIGEA has developed somewhat of a “cat and mouse” game between operators and credit/debit card companies. Many methods of depositing still exist for American online poker players, despite the legal implications that have been threatened at various stages by authorities.

Echecks, Ewalletexpress, Usemywallet and pre-paid VISA cards are amongst the cashier options that continue to work well for Americans.