Epassporte News: Epassporte says "Screw US Online Poker Players"

Recently, the online poker community has been concerned about problems with Epassporte, the safest and most popular choice for US poker players to transfer money between poker rooms. As of Friday April 11th, 2008, Epassporte appears to have decided to stop allowing deposits from the US. After increased legal pressure from US officials, Epassporte has effectively said “screw US poker players“. Much in the way that Neteller did in late 2006 after the UIGEA was passed.

Epassporte hides the truth from customers

While Epassporte still hasn’t come clean about their decision, a leak from a reliable source was made public at the popular poker forum 2 + 2. In a thread titled ePassporte reportedly pulls plug on US players, veteran member MiltonFriedman posted the first notion that the end was near for US Epassporte customers. Later, a popular US poker room, Cake Poker wrote the following message to players.

To all Cake Poker Customers:

We have received notice from ePassporte today that they are unable to continue to provide CakePoker with merchant e-wallet services. We have since confirmed that this situation is not unique to CakePoker and is, in fact, industry wide.

While we are disappointed with this decision, we want to reassure all players that there will be no impact to either your account balances or your account status at Cake. We are pleased to have launched earlier this week with a new payment processor and have already secured alternative processors/eWallets that we will be launching in the weeks to come.

We are also in discussions with other providers that will be making their services available in the CakePoker cashier soon. Players are welcome to inquire with Customer Support for more details.
As always, we value your business and will continue to make every effort possible to make your poker experience a great one.

Regards,

The Cake Poker Team

The two largest online poker sites PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have removed all mention of depositing via Epassporte, although they still haven’t released any news about it.

The full impact of Epassporte’s news on US poker players is still unknown

As of right now, it’s uncertain whether Epassporte will follow suit by freezing the accounts of American poker players. Thus far, players have still been able to withdraw funds via ATM. If you have money on Epassporte, I would get it out IMMEDIATELY. This warning is only if you have money in your EPASSPORTE account, not if you have money at an online poker room.

US friendly poker rooms are showing no signs of pandering to US legal pressure any time soon. Epassporte’s decision is more of a temporary inconvenience rather than something online poker players need to be concerned over. This is a golden opportunity for smaller e-wallet services to step up their game and take advantage of the situation. One thing I know for sure is that US poker sites are busy trying to find solid alternatives to Epassporte.

I’ll continue following this situation closely and will have a list of alternative deposit methods for US poker players very soon.