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While no official statement has been released by Intertops.com, the oldest online gambling site in the world has stopped accepting new US registrants for the time being in all spaces unless invited by other players. This includes sports betting, poker and its online casino.
The decision appears to have been made without much notice as only yesterday the following tweet was made by Intertops:
Intertops was the first ever online sportsbook. USA players always welcome http://bit.ly/Intertops
Not always but....USA players still appear to be welcome provided they already opened accounts at Intertops prior to Wednesday June 20, 2012. Those established players can also invite their friends from the US. Intertops.com did announce Tuesday evening the set up a user-to-user deposit method, which apparently provides a somewhat inconvenient way in which players from the US can join through friends in other nations.
1.2.5. No sign-ups initiated from France will be accepted in the Sportsbook, Casino or Poker Room. Intertops reserves the right to refuse new registrations from the United States.
Thank you for your interest in Intertops! Unfortunately, we are unable to accept new customers from your country or region at this time. If you believe you received this message in error please contact our customer support team.
Both messages leave open the possibility that Intertops, like many of their counterparts, will return to the US market at a later date for new users.
Intertops.com is part of the newly branded Revolution Gaming Network, that last week became the biggest US-facing online poker network and is currently running neck and neck with Merge Gaming. Revolution includes Lock Poker, Cake Poker and Intertops. Some of the Web poker sites on the network (formerly known as the Cake Poker Network) have long held a policy not to accept US clients.
A number of US-facing online gambling websites pulled out of the US market last spring and summer. Most of those, with the notable exception of PokerStars, have quietly re-entered the market.
Gambling911.com can confirm that a key processor for accepting deposits has stopped allowing Visa transactions. A number of the higher volume online gambling websites are currently scrambling to set up new credit card processing. This coupled with the surge in new signups originating from the USA as a result of the network switchover could be proving too overbearing on Intertops at the present time.
Credit card deposit processing issues have plagued the US-facing Internet gambling industry long before passage of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
