Epassport Drama
 

In the recent Epic Cash mailer, they wrote:

"Epic Cash Announcement
epassporte no longer an option for payment

**IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT**
Epic Cash will no longer use the epassporte system any longer as a payment option.

Why you ask?
For the simple fact they have put the adult webmasters and affiliate programs at risk."


Does anybody know what this is about?

Apparently more and more affiliate programs get their bank accounts closed because they are doing business with ePassporte. And ePassporte does handle a lot of gambling transactions and banks don't seem to like that.
That's what I've heard, ofcourse what do I know? :)

I read that too...
It happened to me almost 2 years ago and finally other banks are doing it.

Do the banks feel threatened or something or is there something more sinister to all this?

With my bank, they told me that they though of epassporte as an offshore bank account. That was before the gambling problem came to light.

I guess we'll be getting only checks again in a few months :(

Could it be that Epassporte is a cheaper and more efficient way of paying webmasters and the banks don't like the fact being as it costs $25 or even £20 here to do a wire transfer through a bank.

I don't know what the gambling problem is but it seems to me that banks don't like cheaper competition.

I really don't think this is a banking conspiracy Bob. My wires were free. :)

Well it would be a shame to loose payments through epassporte.

Maybe it will get resolved somehow.

From my bank, to send an international wire from the US is about $40-50. $25 to send within the US

Then if you are receiving, it is about $10-20.

Then if there is a lot of "stops" on the way, you may get more fees.

Those are about standard rates.

so are you all going to be moving away from epassporte then? Been looking into it but I hear mixed reviews.

Im paranoid with my money

So am I ;)
Which is why I've never used epassporte.

I'm having a hell of a time trying to open up an account with them, chase visa no likey.

The only major problem I had with them is that my country is on their banned list and I had to open a controlled account which has certain restrictions.

I'm also paranoid with my money which is why about a year ago I switched 99.5% of my affiliate payments to Epassport. I can't reply on my mail system here to deliver my checks plus when the mail contractors deliver my checks to the wrong mail box, my lovely neighbors send them back to sender instead of giving them to me. I had thought Epassport would solve all this and assure I'd get all my money. I've recently started having a few processing problems with them which I hadn't had up until now. I guess I may have to go back to the ol' paper check method. Will keep my eyes open to any new Epassport developments. |yawn|

Is it possible that gambling aside, the gov feels that it's too easy to launder money through epass? Homeland security really stepped up on the banks and how they send international funds, even up here. Every time I've sent a wire from Montreal to Russia, a bank in NY would phone me to ask why I'm sending it, on top of the usual security precautions like my photo id, blood type, shoe size....

The worst part of the whole situation, is that the banks don't ask questions first and then act later. They shut down your account, and any other accounts that you have with them. They are so afraid of the big brother, that they don't really care what your side of the story is. To them, Epass = gambling.

Then, the best part.. is that they notify you by snail mail. Most people find out when logging in to check the status of a transaction. :(

I havent spoken to anyone at epic but 2 other sponsors told me that they are taking advice from their lawyers and removing epass before "the shit hits the fan"... whatever that means.

always been dodgy
 

The effort involved in getting an e-pass tells a story, i ran a mile as soon as it was apparent. I used to get frustrated at how people raved on about it being great purely because the next man did, i thought it was poor and it seems its showing its longevity now. Plus didnt the founder make his cash and go to the beach leaving the office in chaos ?


|shocking|

all in all, i honestly hope epassporte doesn't go away. whatever it's not, it's certainly convenient!

They're obviously having some issues with the gambling thing, but I think they'll hang on for a while yet. *crosses fingers*

I think epass is a great system and hope they can work through these issues and stick around for the long term.

I agree Kenny. Epassporte is a very good thing for the adult webmaster community if only for webmasters that have problems with checks and wires who live outside the US.

One thing I have to wonder and will check out with my old bank. When a bank decides they no longer want to deal with people using epassporte, do there ATM's still allow people to withdraw money with an epass card?

Anyone know of any UK banks that don't or won't deal with them?
I've not had any issues withdrawing on mine from any bank here.

I believe so, I have withdrawn funds from various ATM's in the US and Canada and never had any issues. I also use the card at many retail locations and have never had any issues.

The only problem I had was an ATM in a mall didn't release my cash and I had to go through epass to get my funds back, the wait time for the CS line was a bit lengthy but they got my $ back into my account.

I hope they can work things out because the system is great!

I can use the card at ATMs in Canada, the only thing is that the 'white label' machines like at the variety stores don't take them. At a regular bank machine that's not in the actual bank (like a grocery store), I have to make sure they have the proper logo to show which networks they accept. I have no problem with my own bank machine or any other machine that's actually in a bank |loony|

I hope it works out too. I love epassporte.

i think epass had a problems in there bank/s

im not sure , also they always a downtime... grrr

We have kicked around not using epassporte partialy because of the high wire fees, for us it's $50 each time. Plus we have had numerous attempts by affiliates who are nothign more than card swipers to try to fraud us with fake joins, we have yet to actually pay out to one of these frauds, but in the mean time we then have to deal with chargebacks if we don't get those signups refunded in time. This only became a problem after we started using epassporte.

no issues in getting money from atm's here either... well, except for the high fees anyways. plus the virtual card is really useful. hopefully everything will work out for the best

i worked a lot with banks in my former job, and IMO thats excatly the point, and what they do is the only way they can bring them down

I really don' think the issue is that banks are afraid of the competition, Epass should be so lucky that the big banks are afraid of them.

lots of epass drama in different boards!

Shits happening.

If you switch back could you not use a Private Mail Box to collect all your checks from? i.e. Having all the checks go to that PMB and visit it once a week or have the PMB staff inform you when you have mail. JMHO

Yes, I suppose I could do that but I guess I'm too lazy to set up a PMB. I'm in the process of switching almost all affiliate payments to checks. Keeping fingers crossed that I get all my mail. :)

i am changing every sponsor who drops payment by epassporte, so if all drop then i will drop bizz, you dont know how much i had to pay in cost by cashing in checks, i was so happy epassporte came after the paypal shit, paypal sucks too, they forched me to pay a huge amound for cost to collect my money and ofcourse i dropped them, so one thing i promise myself, after paypal and now epaasporte, if i have to deal with checks i drop this bizz, i had tons of checks bounched, i pay an huge amound to cash in the checks, epasporte was heaven for me,so every sponsor who drops epassporte,then i will drop the sponser, so epic cash is off my list too.

If they are going down, it's going to be a long spiral. Hopefully by then they get it together.

I got the same email from epic cash regarding this and queried it with them. These are the emails.

Original email recieved:
Epic Cash will no longer use the epassporte system any longer as a payment option.
Why you ask?
For the simple fact they have put the adult webmasters and affiliate programs at risk.

To which i replied:
Can you give some specifics as to why adult webmasters and affiliate
programs are at risk?


I got this reply:
any that use epassporte.

I sent this follow up email but go no further response:
Sorry but your reply doesn't make any sense to me with regard to the
question. Can you be a little more specific regarding your announcement?

Make of it what you will. I never got a decent reply from epic cash and i doubt if anyone will ever know for certain why they dumped epass or what made them post such an ambiguous post regarding their decision.

Hope epass stays for a while. It's so easy to recieve and withdraw money with it. Would suck to go back to checks.

And second thing. I can`t pay with my epassporte virtual card via PayPal to e-mail address :(