A couple of years back, a law known as the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) was passed in the USA. The goal of the law was to stop USA citizens from gambling online by making allowing transactions to online gambling sites illegal. However because it is very hard for the credit card companies to monitor to transactions and to block only the gambling transaction, the law so far hasn’t had all that much effect in the reality. Thus USA gamblers have been able to fund their online poker and casino account’s rather easily. In fact most of the players have even been able to use their credit cards for depositing money to online poker sites just as before the law was passed.

However this might be changing now, according to several usually realiable sources MasterCard has finally stopped allowing USA citizens to deposit money to online gambling sites. And worst of all according to the industry rumours VISA might be soon following MasterCard.

If you are from the USA and you can no longer deposit money with your credit card you might want to look into so called e-wallets, as many of those (however PayPal for an example doesn’t allow USA players to deposit with it to online gambling sites, even though it allows gamblers from the Europe to do it) appear to still allow USA poker players to deposit money to selected online poker rooms.

It is hard to think that MasterCard pulling out from the USA online gambling market just before the super bowl is a coincidence.