July 27, 2010 (CAP News Wire) – In a pretty major sign that the online gambling industry — and those companies that do business with the online gambling industry — are starting to feel much more confident about the prospects of regulated online gambling in the U.S., PayPal has begun returning to the Internet gambling payment processing business. (Albeit very slowly.)
Once upon a time, PayPal was the online gambling world’s payment method of choice. But following its acquisition by eBay in 2002, PayPal was pulled out of the online gambling world because of the legal risks in the United States.
This was pre-UIGEA, but back then, the Wire Act pretty much had the same anti-online gambling effects on payment processors. There was just less attention paid to it, making PayPal’s move at that time seem overly cautious.
Now, with the credit card, banking, and financial services industries speaking up more and more loudly against the UIGEA’s restrictions — the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) even spoke out against the UIGEA in last week’s Internet gambling hearings — PayPal seems to be inching back into the market it abandoned years ago.
Ladbrokes and 32Red have recently began allowing PayPal payments on their websites, and many observers are implying that this means that PayPal is back in the online gambling industry, slowly making itself available to more and more online casinos. PayPal is also available on the Virgin gaming network, and will most likely integrate into more iGaming sites in the near future.