American Bankers Association Can't Stop Online Casinos

The American Bankers Association has finally made their concerns known regarding the imposed responsibility they have to uphold the prohibition rules on online gambling in the USA. Steve Kenneally, the Vice President of the American Bankers Association, stated recently that the full implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act would be an expensive and ineffective way for the American government to deal with online gambling. He added the Act has no real control over online gambling activity, which will result in a waste of taxpayer’s money. The banks are only able to stop transactions to online casinos if they are identified as being an online gambling operation. There are many ways an operator from an offshore location can mask or disguise their identities with the result being they will go undetected by most financial institutions, making the law preventing the transmission of funds to customers in the USA not effective. Kenneally explained that the government has not clarified it's definition of “unlawful transaction” and “illegal gambling”, which has left officials from various banks to interpret for themselves which transactions they should block and what they will allow. There are many grey areas in those interpretations that the bankers have had trouble with before. Some online gambling activity such as lotteries and horseracing is legal in certain states in the USA. A large number of banks and credit card companies have put a stop on the wrong transactions by mistake. A few European countries consider poker and sports betting as a process that requires skill and therefore allow transactions from those online gambling activities. Again it has been difficult for the banking industry to sort out which are legal and which are not. It will cost the banks an enormous amount of money to put in place a system in America that can effectively lock the proper online gambling exchanges, costs that the general pubic will eventually be obliged to pay.