Hard Lobbying For Online Gambling Regulations
MasterCard has spent $880,000 in the first six months of this year to lobby the federal government. The company lobbied on legislation related to the regulation and enforcement of Internet Gambling. MasterCard, through its paid lobbyists have contacted Congress, the Treasury, and the Justice Departments concerning their efforts. Visa Card has in the first six months of this year given $200,000 to one lobbying company for various different legislation, one of which was Internet gambling. As with MasterCard, Visa stands to make a lot of money if regulations are passed to allow this type of transaction, and lose much if they must disallow it. This loss will come from lost revenue due to not being able to process these types of transactions, and also the projected expense to monitor individual usage by as many as 25 million Americans. 
Online gambling is a large market in the U.S. and currently - users of these services are finding other ways to transfer money to fund their accounts.