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.