shipitfish | Patient Critical

Because I read my blog RSS feeds before I read my email this morning, F-Train was the first to tell me that I had this lovely message waiting for me.

I have been scrambling to figure out what payment service I should open to replace my Firepay account. I can only guess that others will close, so it may be a pointless endeavor. Online poker is dead. It's so pointless.

Update: After a little bit of research, I am thinking that perhaps EPassporte is the best option to weather the 170 days to come after the bill is signed. Full Tilt lists it as one of its options explicitly, but as near as I can tell, it just gives you a Visa number that is not restricted (presumably a non-US issued one). I'm going to give it a try for the 170 days to see how it goes. They use Paypal-style verification with tiny deposits to your account.

The letter from Firepay follows:

To: "" <info@firepay.com>
From: "info@firepay.com" <info@firepay.com>
Subject: New FirePay policy for US account holders
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:31:50 -0400

On September 30, 2006, the United States Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

Once President Bush approves the Act. FirePay (www.firepay.com) will no longer allow US consumer payments for online gambling merchants.

Beginning the day President Bush signs the Act, FirePay will decline any purchase transactions from US FirePay account holders at any gambling merchant site.
Ten days after President Bush signs the Act, FirePay will decline any transfer attempt made by any online gambling merchant to a US FirePay account.

All US FirePay accounts holders will continue to be able to make purchases and receive payments from non-gambling, online merchants, as well as “Deposit From” and “Withdraw To” their US bank account.
Click here for the latest news and opportunities for FirePay account holders.

** Please note:

This new policy will not affect FirePay account holders from outside of the United States

For any questions regarding these deadlines or policy, please email info@firepay.com

Sincerely,
FirePay
info@firepay.com

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"Online poker is dead."

Really? I think the new fish are the same as the old fish.

I don't necessarily disagree with that statement, but if you can't get money in and out of your online account, how exactly will you cash in on your edge against those fish?

Neteller still works right? I admit I got a lot of money offline recently, but I left just enough in one of the still-doing-business-with-american-sites for the occasional session.

Also, how often do you really need to deposit?

Netteller requires you to give an SSN to use it, which I think is an inappropriate invasion of privacy. I'm going to try epassporte, which I've just updated the entry above with the details.

Meanwhile, Brett, are you really not coming to the homegame on Sunday because of football? Another football fan has RSVP'ed, so it will definitely be on during the game.

Netteller requires you to give an SSN to use it, which I think is an inappropriate invasion of privacy.

Your loss. If you want to use Firepay which from what I gather actually costs money compared to Neteller, so be it. From my perspective anything other than Neteller is -EV. I'm not paranoid or anything, but as far as I'm concerned their explanation is fine by me. Considering they are probably simply checking your information against a database of SSNs, it's not like they can't already find it if they wanted to.

Is there a fine line between invasion opf privacy/security of funds? Your bank asks for your SS#, no? Neteller is a bank.

I *might* come Sunday. But, yes, I have one sport that I watch fairly religiously and they play most games on Sunday. Mixed games does sound like fun though.

There's also an outside chance I hit AC as its been rumored that Mark Gastineau has been regularly playing the 20-40 game.

i've used ePassport before and found them to be satisfactory, although not as nice as Neteller.

That's good news! Did you do cashouts (charge-backs) as well as deposits with it? Did that work ok? Did you use it on sites that accepted normal Visa and didn't mention Epassporte directly?

One of the reasons I think Epassporte might be a particularly good choice is that since it's just a Visa card number, there is some chance it might be more resilient in this turbulent time than Netteller and Firepay. Are there vendors that take Netteller that aren't gambling sites? And, even if there are, I'm sure they are rare.

Meanwhile, since EPassporte is just an international Debit Visa card, banks can argue quite reasonably that since Visa is taken everywhere (even where they don't take American Express :), it's hard to argue that EPassporte is just a shill third party for gambling sites. Making that argument for Firepay and Netteller is pretty freaking easy.

if i recall correctly, i deposited money to them that i used to deposit to party for a ePassport specific bonus, then cashed money back to ePassport from Party to use the same bonus on each of the other skins (they all did the bonus individually). i don't think i ever actually cashed money back to my bank account from ePassport since I probably just cashed it out to neteller or my account directly with the IGM pay.

Neteller does have non-gambling vendors, but they are mostly in Europe. Neteller initially stated that the law would have a materially adverse effect on its business, but it has subsequently stated that it will not change its practices (if it can continue with the loss of customers) - seeing as every entity involved with my money has my SSN these days (and as a NY litigator, someone could very, very easily figure out what my number is), I wasn't troubled by the SSN thing

--Alceste

You said that anything other than Neteller is -EV. That's a pretty harsh statement. Firepay doesn't charge for cashouts, only deposits, and I rarely make deposits since I think I've only went broke online once in the past two years. (A statement to how below my bankroll I may be playing, since less than half my bankroll floats around online most of the time.)

Usually, I just move money from one poker site to the next when I need to deposit again.

As for the SSN issue, I work hard to limit the number of people who can match my SSN to me. Netteller probably can't get your SSN, they can just check a database to see if the SSN you gave them matches. Thus, they don't have it until you give it to them, but once you do, they know it's valid.

I don't mind giving it to US banks as much (although I've been pretty lucky in that regard as well), because at least US federal privacy legislation (weak as it is) protects me. These offshore financial institutions don't have the same protections and I don't have the same redresses if identity theft happens that way.

And, as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I'm looking for the payment method that seems least likely to be impacted by the legislation. My limited reading of it indicates that they will have the most difficulty regulating offshore financial institutions that do lots of different types of transactions other than online gambling. An offshore Debit Visa hooked up to your US bank account seems the most credible type of account (i.e., the last to be reached by the legislation and the most likely to survive the full 170 days, or perhaps longer).

Patient Critical

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