re: #10 Gus 802

OK - what about these people then…

2.04pm:An IT firm that helps WikiLeaks collect payments is threatening to sue Visa and MasterCard, writes Josh Halliday.

The international credit card company, Visa, today ordered payments processor DataCell to suspend all of its transactions, just 23 hours after it cut off all donations being made to WikiLeaks.

DataCell, a small Icelandic company which facilitates transfers made by credit cards including Visa and Mastercard, says it will take up “immediate legal actions” to ensure that donations can once again be made to WikiLeaks.

Andreas Fink, the chief executive of DataCell, today warned that the powerful “duopoly” of Visa and Mastercard, which have both suspended payments to WikiLeaks in the past week, could spell “the end of the credit card business worldwide.”

“Visa is hurting Wikileaks and DataCell in high figures,” Fink said in a statement. “Putting all payments on hold for seven days or more is one thing but rejecting all further attempts to donate is making the donations impossible.

“This does clearly create massive financial losses to Wikileaks which seems to be the only purpose of this suspension. This is not about the brand of Visa, this is about politics and Visa should not be involved in this.”

Visa and Mastercard payments started being rejected on DataCell’s systems late on Wednesday evening. “We have received a suspension notice stating that Visa Europe has ordered our payment processor to suspend payments and undertake due diligence investigation in order to protect the Visa brand [and] ensure neither the payment processor nor Visa Europe is running legal risks by facilitating payments for the funding of the Wikileaks website,” Fink said.

He added: “We can not believe WikiLeaks would even create scratch at the brand name of Visa. The suspension of payments towards WikiLeaks is a violation of the agreements with their customers.

“Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to WikiLeaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish. It will probably hurt their brand much much more to block payments towards WikiLeaks than to have them occur.

“Visa customers are contacting us in masses to confirm that they really donate and they are not happy about Visa rejecting them. It is obvious that Visa is under political pressure to close us down.

“They have no problem transferring money for other businesses such as gambling sites, pornography services and the like so why a donation to a Website which is holding up for human rights should be morally any worse than that is outside of my understanding.”

Speaking to the Fresh Outlook Fink added: “It is simply ridiculous to even think Wikileaks has done anything criminal. If Wikileaks is criminal, then CNN, and BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, al-Jazeera and many others would have to be considered criminals too as they publish the same informations. Nobody even tries to touch them though. You can still buy a New York times subscription and pay with your credit card I guess.”

Same with them?