North American-facing binary options affiliates are bracing themselves for a major change in their business after Visa issued a statement saying it would be cracking down on the industry.
While Visa says that it will continue processing transactions from binary options sites, but it also made it clear that it would be subjecting those transactions to serious scrutiny.
Word of the move, which Visa has not yet made public, was first made public by
FinanceMagnates.com, a site which focuses on the binary options, commodities and Forex industries. According to the report, Visa is citing an uptick in fraud cases emanating from binary options sites as the driving force behind the crackdown.
A big part of Visa’s beef with binary options, and their relationships with North American customers, is that most of the sites they’re dealing with are not regulated by US or Canadian securities regulators. Whether they’re engaged in fraud or, that means that most of these companies are not in compliance with North American financial laws.
While supporters of the industry could make the argument that most binary options sites operate within the law anyways, that’s not likely to hold much sway with the hyper-cautious
While the crackdown doesn’t involve a complete ban on binary options money, it’s serious enough to be called a, “war on binary options,” by some of the industry’s biggest names. In an interview with Finance Magnates, Tal Miller, the CEO of payments provider Fibonatix described the situation as follows:
Visa’s decision to specifically point out Binary Options brokers targeting Canadian and American clients is an additional escalation in the war the regulators in both countries are waging against unregulated operators. This follows a similar move made by MasterCard with regards to FX and Binary Options brokers targeting Japanese clients back in April this year.
Though the credit card industry hasn’t officially declared war on the binary options industry, it’s clear that they’re very much on their radar and that can’t be good news for binary options affiliates.