In the past, Mastercard has wanted to block deposits made by United States residents at online gambling. But, they could not identify a coding system that would stop payments only from those they wanted to exclude from going through. Instead, they were processed as uncoded transactions.

Now, Mastercard has figured out a way to prevent those attempted online gambling transactions at online casino and online poker sites from being processed. In the future, online gambling sites may figure a way around it. But, for now, if you live in the U.S., online gaming sites are blocked for Mastercard users.

This comes at a time when online gambling is at a crossroad. The UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) was delayed from the beginning of this year to June 1st. So, the online casino world is waiting to see if Congress will pass Barney Frank’s online gambling bills. Basically, it doesn’t look good for online gambling until the UIGEA is abolished and U.S. Congress adopts the online gambling bills as law. In the meantime, online gambling software needs a way to be effectively blocked, just in case the UIGEA is enacted. Then, credit card companies must be ready to put the blocks in place or face the legal repercussions.

Visa has not solved the coding problem as effectively as Mastercard, so players that use Visa credit cards are still able to make online casino deposits with them. Online gambling sites are still processing them as uncoded transactions. This may be temporary for Visa, which could use the methods discovered by Mastercard. In the past, financial institutions have wrongfully blocked gambling transactions that shouldn’t have been blocked, such as lottery tickets. All in all, this is not good news for online gamblers in the U.S.