Neteller pull out of the US - Gaming Online

The search engines paint a colorful picture of Neteller and Paypal with many a story about corruption and people getting proverbially 'shafted' waiting for money to be transferred to their accounts. Seems to be a common story. Well may be some good news for some and not for others. A few days interest here and there and there is a nice little profit to be made. Paypal fairly recently started closing accounts that were being used to fund gaming related payments being made. A bold move and i guess the fear of not being able to control the use of the service by US players (see US Poker Rooms still available) played a large part. Not good news for online poker players.

You may have read a couple of days ago that NETeller founders Stephen Lawrence and John LeFebvre were arrested and charged with money laundering. That certainly came as a surprise for a service that processed more than 7 Billion in payments a year, the profit is far from loose change.

The big news is that Neteller have decided to pull out of the US market and have immediately ceased all transactions to and from the US. "It must be difficult for (Internet poker sites that allow U.S. players) to continue doing good business without NETeller," said Jez San, the president of PKR.com, an Internet poker room that decided not to allow U.S. players to play real money games when it launched last fall. "Whoever they end up using to replace them in the short term will no doubt not be around in the long term either."

NETeller isn't the only payment processor pulling out of the U.S. Citadel Commerce, Central Coin and Nexum Financial's (Full Tilt Poker's "Instant eCheck" provider) have all decided to stop allowing U.S. players to conduct transactions with Internet gambling companies. 

"This decision was made by the ESI Board of Directors in the light of recent US Department of Justice enforcement actions against financial processors executives," reads a press release from the parent company of Vancouver based Citadel Commerce.