The UIGEA will take effect today

The UIGEA, approved in part by George Bush, will take effect today. As a result, the American Banking Association is afraid of the additional burden that could add on his shoulders and the American banking system.

For example, from today, credit cards and other banking companies must begin to develop measures to block the use of these cards for purposes of "illegal gamblind" even if what is legal or not has not yet been clarified.

One of the biggest problems with the UIGEA is the lack of clear definition to describe what the "unlawful gambling", leaving banks all power wanted to define what is legal and what is not. Steve Kenneally, Vice President of the American Bankers Association, said: "this is not a good thing for the banks. Instead of having hit behind the head by a telephone handset, we were very solidly struck by a baseball bat. And it still hurts."

Final settlement of the UIGEA released November 12, 2008 and effective today, included the following aspects:

The law does not target the players; It is targeted at financial institutions and the gambling sites themselves.
Affected by the UIGEA payment methods are: credit cards, checks, money transfer between companies, electronic and automatic, electronic payments.
Credit card companies will have a harder task because they will have to assign to the merchants of all online gambling sites a particular code in addition to monitor closely all transactions with them.

Several public organizations demonstrated against the UIGEA; most of them are part of the Poker Player's Alliance, led by the former Senator from New York Alfonse D'Amato. These people think that the UIGEA has violated freedoms private in addition to the burden of the financial institutions in times of economic crisis.