Patient Critical

[shipitfish]

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:

1. This new policy will not affect FirePay account holders from outside of the United States
2. For any questions regarding these deadlines or policy, please email info@firepay.com

Sincerely,
FirePay
info@firepay.com

Comments

[shunny.livejournal.com]

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.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

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).