ePassporte Official Statment
 

From: Christopher Mallick, Owner, ePassporte.com



Dear ePassporte Account Holders,

Please be advised that, at 12:00 PM PDT today, September 2, 2010, we were notified that effective immediately, Visa International has suspended our banking partner’s (St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank) ePassporte Visa program. The ePassporte e-Wallet program continues to be up and running, except funds cannot be transferred between your Visa Account and your e-Wallet. At this time ePassporte can no longer issue Visa Cards, and the ability for our Account Holders to make point of sale purchases and withdraw funds from ATMs has also been suspended.

At this time we do not know why this drastic action was taken by Visa. To us, it is unconscionable that such action would be taken without the opportunity for ePassporte to fully understand Visa’s reasons and to be able to take all steps necessary to keep our program running the way it has so successfully done for over 7 years. But that is what Visa has done.

As soon as we have more information we will be in contact with you.

In the meantime please be assured that your funds are safe.

We are very sorry for the short notice and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The ePassporte team is working diligently to rectify this situation.

We kindly ask you to bear with us while we work through this issue.

Please feel free to contact us via the message center or at our call center, should you have any questions, comments or concerns.

Thank You,



Christopher Mallick

Please email me if you have questions I will do my best to respond as quickly as possible.

Well this sucks. :(

If the funds are on the Wallet then its possible to withdraw still using out other Withdrawal options.

Mine are in the Visa Virtual Account which it seems is now frozen.

On the plus side I only leave enough funds in there to pay for a few months worth of partner accounts.

I just changed my settings so that any new funds will go into my eWallet.

Guess it's time to go change my payment method at all my sponsors...

how would this be possible???

so I am a bit confused - I have funds in my visa virtual account and for now I cant go to a atm and pull funds?

The cards are suspended but if the money is on the Wallet they are not on the card and can be moved.

Its not possible to use the virtual or Electron card at this time.

I see now and hope its not more than a couple days, cause then I will be in a bind paying my hosting plus other shit - dam what a bitch

thanks for the answers keyser

holy shit this is fucking hilarious.

it's just one blow after another this year.

I got everything in my fucking virtual visa account holy shit that's funny.

this is unlikely to be resolved quickly, I'm thinking.

I gotta change my settings so anything else deposited goes to the wallet where at least there's a chance of using it.

Well, I really hope this gets fixed up soon. It's been great not having to pay exorbitant check fees... but perhaps it's all over now.

We've made a point of not letting money pile up in our epassporte account. Still, I don't want to lose the funds that are in there.

St Kitts... that name raises awful memories of the Globill thing

how can you use it if its in the wallet? only US account can do this?

I hope it will be fixed by tomorrow or by tuesday

Reading through all the boards and that hideous excuse for a board over at the Zoo this all seems to be linked back to the failure of this bank.

Just to add frustration to this mess last night I tried to change my payment type to check at one of my sponsors that was getting ready to pay me but the verification email that is sent out to accept changes doesn't work so this morning I woke to find that I had received a payment to my ePassporte account this morning. At least I did log into ePassporte last night and changed the setting to place all new transfers to go into my eWallet so this payment now sits in my eWallet instead of my Visa Virtual account.

Good idea. I set mine that way some months ago and I'd suggest anyone who doesn't have their account set that way should log into ePassporte asap and make that change.




1010100011

i suggest changing your payment details on every affiliate program you've joined. looks like epass is going down the drain.
i requested my monies to be wire transferred...waiting for the result...

The more I think about it, the more fucked I am. I use epass to renew all my domains.. I have a lot of work to do.

For those who haven't read the 15+ page Zoo thread, if a sponsor sends you a commission payment it will be received into your Wallet if that's how you have your account set to receive money. If you have your account set to receive funds directly into your Visa/Virtual Visa account then the amount sent to you will be refused and returned to the sponsor.

Michael has posted over there that he's asked the ePassporte techs to switch all accounts to receiving all funds into their Wallet instead of the Visa part of the account so payments can be received. I don't know if that's been done already, so you may want to do it yourself on your account. Or you may decide you'd rather have the sponsors get the payments returned to them so you can have them pay you another way.

Ouch, I have money going through ePass just so I don't get the double currency exchange hit converting from US$ to CDN$ to US$. |cry|

Most of my expenses are in US$ and of course the banks never lose on exchange, so it works out to about a 4-5% double hit each time. |angry|

Plus, CDN credit cards like throwing in "foreign transaction" fees on top when I do US$ purchases. |crazy|



When I went to use the Royal Bank of St. Kitts about 25 yrs. ago, there was a sign on the window "gone fishing, back tomorrow". |whisper|

Any idea if/when we will be able to transfer money out of our Virtual Visa and into our Wallet? I don't have a lot, but I have enough to pay my flipping TGP partner accounts for a few months in there, and would like to have access to those funds. |banghead|

I've got two sponsors that epassporte is my only option, as I don't make enough to justify the $30 wire fees.

I switched my account so new funds go in my Wallet. Once they get there, I can withdraw to my bank account? I've never used the Wallet option before.

Not sure what the fees are but you need to have a Verified Checking account in your admin to do this.

I do have that. |thumb I've withdrawn before using the Virtual Visa, but not using the Wallet.

Yeah I'm going to really miss stopping by the local ATM to withdraw a big wad of cash. :(

I have epass to go into wallet so I am fine there, for the moment. Only a few sponsors pay me this way because of the webmaster check issue.

Now receiving emails from sponsors saying to change payment method from epass to something else. This should get interesting.

I've not had a physical card for awhile, I was just getting ready to get another one, mine expired last year. Glad I didn't go through with it, as that would be $35 down the tubes.

http://www.italkcash.com/forum/e-cur...tml#post331037

From the above thread ... "The reason for this move from Visa is most likely because of the new rules enforced by Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

New rules has come in place regarding debit pre paid cards, gift cards and reloadable top up cards. The rules, which were mandated by the Credit CARD Act of 2009, require more data collection and reporting from businesses, and some experts say they could make prepaid card buying a challenge for some consumers.

Starting June 28, the public will have 30 days to comment on the rules, which require nonbank prepaid card providers to:

Quote:
File suspicious activity reports (SARs) with the government on suspicious activity of more than $2,000. Suspicious Activities Reports are Treasury Department forms already required of banks, casinos, poker rooms, securities and futures firms and others in the money services business. More than 5.6 million have been filed since they were first mandated in 1996 (see chart). The proposed rule would add nonbank card providers to the ranks of those required to file forms with the government when their suspicions are aroused.
Collect customer information anytime a card is reloaded at someplace other than a bank.
Maintain transaction information.
The rule focuses on the following:

Quote:
Don't have the value clearly labeled on them.
Are reloadable at places other than banks.
Can have a maximum lifetime value of more than $1,000, including reloads.
Can be used anywhere -- especially if they can be used internationally.
Can have the value transferred to another card.
Are purchased in large amounts or seem otherwise suspicious.
Basically this is another terrorists anti-money laundry mumbo jumbo, but for now Epassporte is going to stay closed unless they will be able to comply with the new regulatations that came into force just a bit more than 30 days ago."

If it is true then it paints a very dark shadow on this type of business since complying with the regulations is onerous to say the least.

I hear ya! Timing couldn't be worse neither as many sponsors pay on the 1st and 16th. Boy do I wish I went to the machine yesterday and took out some cash.

Good news is my biz account is set to receive funds in the wallet so that money is accessible but my personal account is not set that way (I just changed it) so that money is froze. Fuck me!

What I do not understand is that if you can still send and receive money thru their wallet account why am I receiving all these emails from sponsors saying to choose another method of payment.

Do sponsors "have" to pay affiliates thru their visa account?

Or are they just afraid of having their money frozen, even if it's in wallet, like what happened at webmaster checks?

(I think I might of answered my own question when typing the last one out, lol)

I have question to epass -

have You any idea when that frozen funds from virtual visa accounts will be or we can transfer to wallet ?

Might actually be a legit time to use this smiley...

|skyfall|

its also a good time to hang out in your irc channel. lots of sexy girls from Europe there

:D

I see the ePassporte story even made Slashdot.

Yes you did.

But I don't see ePassporte going away, the industry needs them and a core group of affiliates have no other choice for a payment option.

Money in the Wallet is safe, the reason that the money on the virtual card can not be moved is that Visa suspended the cards and then its not possible to move money to/from the cards, we are working with Visa to get this issue solved and hopefully this will be solved soon.

How soon? kids getting hungry...me going bonkers |loony|

Sorry no news yet as soon as we have we will post it and send message to message center. We expect a solution this week.

Fingers crossed

Any developments?

Are things progressing?