Is This the Beginning of the End of MCC 7995 for Online Gambling in Regulated States
The new Ultimate Poker, Station Casino’s online poker property, is now accepting Mastercard transactions, making them the first licensed poker room in the United States to do so.
Several months ago Visa sent out a bulletin to its merchant customers that stated, in part, that “not all transactions coded with MCC 7995 are from unlawful internet gambling merchants”. Essentially this means that in certain cases transactions that would otherwise have been automatically blocked may now be successfully processed. Visa also issues an Merchant Verification Value to help in this process, however that codes is provided subsequent to the transaction verification, so it has limited value during the actual deposit process. Visa has opened the door for their Merchant Banks and Card Issuing banks to now process these transactions, but this doesn’t necessarily translate to open processing across the industry, at least not yet.
In Mastercard’s case, who also uses MCC 7995 for some gaming transactions, they have added several new MCCs, most notably 9754 for horse racing, dog racing and non-sport internet gaming, and 9399 for lotteries. While not yet verified, it is expected that their transactions with Ultimate Poker are likely being coded with MCC9754
The UIGEA introduced significant fines and penalties for financial institutions that facilitated financial transactions between their members and gaming sites, by any method, including credit cards, and as long as the Merchant and Issuing banks feel that they are still exposed to financial penalties, they are still going to be slow to allow these kinds of transactions.
- source: www.americanigamingsolutions.com
