Online Gambling Ban Continues to Dog New Hampshire Lottery
Credit card companies have been denying subscriptions to the Powerball and Megabucks games in New Hampshire. These subscriptions are set up to regularly bill customers for lottery draws, allowing them to reduce the need to buy new tickets for each draw. They are the only games for which New Hampshire accepts credit cards, but those transactions are now being blocked by the card issuers.
Rick Wisler, spokesman for the New Hampshire Lottery, told Online Casino Advisory Wednesday morning that despite much coverage and protesting, the credit card companies are still not honoring the online sales.
Over a million dollars is being lost in New Hampshire because the US Department of Treasury finalized rules for the much criticized UIGEA without clearly defining terms. Critics admit that credit card companies cannot be blamed for refusing to pay transactions labeled as online gambling, as they are avoiding putting themselves at risk.
The Department of the Treasury may wish this was someone else's mess, but the responsibility to elucidate exactly which acts constitute illegal Internet gambling falls on it. Further, as many pointed out in advance, putting the finance companies in a position of policing is bound to have deleterious effects.
Wisler said that the Department of the Treasury had verified that state lottery sales are not meant to be part of the payment transaction ban on online casinos. However, the Treasury Department asserts that they have no control over what Visa and Mastercard decide, and, even though the transactions should be good, it is not their issue.
As many of the opponents of the UIGEA proclaimed would happen, online casinos continue to do business with unprotected US consumers, while legitimate business interests are hampered, and states, and thus US citizens, are the only ones who end up suffering.
