Visa starts then halts Wikileaks donations acceptance

PAYMENT FIRM Visa has explained why it briefly accepted donations made to Wikileaks and then promptly stopped.

The firm was discovered to have dropped its embargo at the end of last week when Datacell, Wikileaks' Iceland-based hosting company reported that it was receiving funds again. News of the lifting of the blockade quickly spread through the internet, and the question appeared, why is Visa accepting payments again?

Well, the answer was, because it made a mistake. Visa spoke to our sister site V3.co.uk and told it, "An acquirer briefly accepted payments on a merchant site linked to WikiLeaks. As soon as this came to our attention, action was taken with the suspension of Visa payment acceptance to the site remaining in place."

Datacell, which had been understandably pleased with the lifting of the ban, was predictably disappointed by the news.

"The reason they give is that orders have been given by the international card companies to close down the gateway and that processing donations to WikiLeaks is a violation of general terms between the two parties," it blogged.

"DataCell has protested this termination and will make a complaint to the Icelandic Financial Authority claiming that Valitor's license to operate as a payment processing company will be cancelled."

Visa initially suspended payments because it was concerned about the legality of Wikileaks. Although it commissioned a third party report about this, which cleared the whistleblower, it apparently misread these findings or just ignored them. µ