Officials from MasterCard announced they would block online casino transactions.  However, this was only for one reason. MasterCard no longer wants to see charges from online casino sites due to the high debt it can cause.  This has left the industry wide open for other companies.  Former MasterCard officials announced a few days after blocking the online casino charges that they were coming out with a new program.  The top company officials have stated they are offering a new transaction processor for the online casino deposits.  The new company helping them work with these new processes is Secure Trading.  The program is called Online Casino Transactor.

This new option will be available for US players once restrictions are lifted for internet gambling.  For now the new online casino equipment will be used in the UK.  The payment processor UC Group owns Secure Trading.  The officials with Secure Trading used to be with MasterCard.  In fact the executives of MasterCard that joined the company are now the head of customer relations, chief operating officer, and chairman.  Chris Thorn was the chief risk officer at MasterCard for 11 years.  Now he has moved on to this new operation.

MasterCard has tried to block payments from online casinos since the USA created the UIGEA law.  MasterCard feels a lot like the rest of the government in the US.  They feel that online casinos are too risky and that they should do their part to block the transactions.  Unfortunately, gaming operations figured out how to list their charges as uncoded.  This meant the charges were getting through because the MasterCard company didn’t know what they were.  Finally, MasterCard found a system that would block all the online casino charges.  They will also be able to block all legitimate gambling charges like state lotteries and domestic horse racing.

Secure Trading is not going to risk the Justice Department in the US, but the UK does not have the same rules.  Instead the UK finds that regulating the online casinos works out better than to completely block it.  This has also meant that many UK players are able to win the jackpots and other prizes because they are competing within a smaller amount of people.  While some have US players and of course European players those that block US players certainly offer more for the UK players.  The downside is that MasterCard in all countries will block the charges.