Visa, Mastercard deny VPN payment block

Updated: Visa Europe and Mastercard has denied blocking payments to Swedish virtual private network provider iPREDator.

News emerged yesterday claiming Visa and rival card issuer Mastercard had barred payments via European payments provider Payson to the Pirate Bay promoted VPN service.

Visa Europe told SC it was not involved in the payment block.

“Visa Europe has not been involved in this matter in any way, and has not made any such stipulations to Payson or to any other organisation.”

Mastercard later also denied its involvement.

"The Payson VPN issue is not a result of a MasterCard decision. This is an issue best directed to Payson," it said in a statement.

An email reportedly sent from Payson to customers published and translated by TorrentFreak stated the company "has restrictions against anonymisation (including VPN services)".

"As a result Payson can unfortunately no longer give your customers the option to finance payments via their cards (VISA or MasterCard)”.

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde said Payson had not returned phone calls.

Payson has still not returned phone calls or emails regarding the Visa/MC blocking of @IPredatorVPN. They refuse to talk about the issue.

— Peter Sunde (@brokep) July 4, 2013

TorrentFreak said Payson confirmed in a telephone interview it was complying with an "urgent requirement from Visa and Mastercard to stop accepting payments for VPN services".

The news comes as Mastercard reversed its blockade of payments to whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Updated with comment from Mastercard.

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