When Epassporte pulled their merchant accounts for online poker sites there was a sudden knee jerk reaction in the poker community to withdraw money from poker sites.

This reaction is expected after what happened with Neteller only a year ago. Fortunately there is little to fear.

While Epassporte was undoubetly the largest poker ewallet for the past year they are not the only way to deposit online.   Online poker instant echecks will take center stage at poker sites that have the option readily in place.

Others who fail to adapt echecks or ewallets will suffer greatly during this time.  According to poker site stat trackers many poker rooms which relied heavily on Epassporte suffered a 30% or greater drop in traffic this weekend.  Saturday and Sunday’s are typically filled with players but that was not the case this mid April.

As for true ewallets, there remains very few.  Ewalletxpress is the last one standing and is not very popular at the moment and is not widely accepted.  One option that I have predicted to become popular in coming months is something called Togglecard.  The Togglecard poker sites are very limited at the moment but I expect a surge in merchants in coming months as poker sites frantically look for methods to serve deposits.

One deposit option that really has thus far disappointed me is Pic-Club.  While they provided what they called a “Legal Proof” deposit method they have failed to bring on big name sites like Poker Stars or Full Tilt Poker.  Instead they have turned into more of an affiliate farm serving to gain revenues through player traffic, not deposit/withdraw fees.  This, in my opinion is turning off the big name poker rooms from using this option.  It gives Pic-Club too much power to manipulate whom they send traffic to.

Just as Neteller came and went so to will Epassporte.  For those who missed the official Epassporte statement here it is.  Players who did the knee jerk reaction and withdrew funds from poker sites via checks/bank wires will once again return to the poker tables once they feel the waters are safe.

In the mean time, Barney Frank is on a path to stop these regulations in their track.  He introduced legislation this week that would stop the regulations to enforce blocking gaming transactions.  Whispers of, “I wish this UIGEA would just disappear” were heard during last weeks Committee hearing about the UIGEA and maybe, just maybe this new bill might do just that.

Author:  Roger Shriver – Compatiblepoker CEO