UC Group Ltd has launched a subsidiary for operations in the United States, Secure Trading. Along with this, the company released a statement to let interested parties know that they plan to offer “safe financial transactions and required consumer protections,” in anticipation of the expected federal legislation in the US.

The move has come at a time when US online casino players are somewhat frustrated over the developments that are taking place with the successful blockage of both MasterCard and Visa credit cards from processing online gambling transactions.

Chris Thom is Secure Trading’s chairman. He was employed by MasterCard for 11 years, and was the chief risk officer at the large credit card company. Ted Friedman is the Chief Operating Officer. Friedman was previously employed at Europay International in Belguim, and at MasterCard in New York. The head of customer sales and support at Secure Trading is T.J. Sharkey. Sharkey had worked at MasterCard for 17 years, and more recently held the position of group head of Global Merchants and Acquirers.

Chris Thom said, “Momentum for regulating Internet gambling in the US has been building for some time now.” He continued to note: “As Congress prepares to take the final step, Secure Trading Inc.’s turnkey system is primed to enable our customers to go live the moment Internet gambling is regulated.”

Although the terms of the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) do state that financial institutions need to block online gambling transactions, the act has not yet reached the point of implementation, and is in fact delayed until the middle of this year, in June 2010.

Mastercard recently managed to block online casino transactions, and now, following closely behind them, VISA has also managed to block online gambling transactions. In the past, the credit card companies had trouble identifying online gambling money transfers, since the coding used by the online gambling operators may have been coded for other forms of e-commerce. The credit card companies have managed to find a way to get around this, and have now worked out how to block online gambling transactions.

There have been reports from some players that they are still able to use their Visa credit cards, however, news reports have stated that Visa’s credit card transactions seem to be blocked for many of the online gambling sites.

The Internet Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act, authored by Congressman Barney Frank, may well be voted into law, and will cause the UIGEA to be abolished. Should this happen, the credit card companies, and other banking institutions, that wish to process online gambling financial transactions, will have no legal problem doing so. At this time, the current law is quite unclear.

MasterCard has decided that they are going to block any and all poker transactions from players located in the US.

It is suspected that this move by MasterCard is more than likely due to UIGEA legislation which will be enacted in June. However, there is a chance that the government may overturn the legislation before June.

This is not the first time that MasterCard has taken an action like this. Online poker sites started changing their codes in order to take MasterCard payments the first time.

Since this second action, many of the online poker sites have gone ahead and removed the MasterCard name from the deposit method sections of their sites.

Many online poker players have been having difficulty adding their deposits with the use of their plastic anyway. This was due partially to the fact that many banks also have a policy in place to block the transactions between players and online poker sites.

Now that MasterCard has decided to block these transactions, all transactions will be blocked regardless of the banks policies regarding online gambling.

This is one more major hit being thrown at online poker players and online poker sites. Online poker players can only find themselves hoping that these blows will come to an end soon. In the mean time, there are still ways for US players to deposit their funds onto their online poker sites, just not through MasterCard.