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

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

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.

[swolfe.livejournal.com]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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