Epassporte leaves US market

At this time it is unclear if Epassporte has left the American market permanently but we do know that at least for the time being Americans are in fact locked out from depositing to all gambling websites using their Epassporte accounts.

It was a 2+2 member with the handle MiltonFriedman who first broke this news four hours ago in this 2+2 thread. While Milton has declined to reveal his sources he is a respected member of the poker community and has went as far to say: “If I am wrong in the substance of my OP (short for: original post), I will NEVER post here again.”

In our own investigation into this matter we spoke to an Epassporte customer service represenative named Marcus who claimed he was aware of rumors posted on various message boards, but stated “at this time” that these were nothing more than rumors and that no policy change has been made. When questioning him on his wording of “at this time” he responded, “it is what it is, no changes have been made at this time”.

Several online poker rooms have removed Epassporte from their list of banking options, including Absolute Poker and Cake Poker, while others such as PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have them listed as temporarily blocked.

The most interesting news thus far has come from online poker room Cake Poker who has included this statement on their cashier:

“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 CakePoker Team ”

PokerStars.com tells us that they’ve received no message from Epassporte similar to the one Cake Poker has posted and they’ve only been told this is a 24 hour technical/maintenance issue.

Full Tilt Poker has not yet responded to our inquiry. Their cashier does show the following message, also mentioning 24 hours.

We will continue to monitor this situation and report back soon.