![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/paypal.jpg\")
PayPal has said that its decision to stop users from using its service to make donations to Wikileaks was made after advice from the US government.<\/p>\nPayPal has said that its decision to stop users from using its service to make donations to Wikileaks was made after advice from the US government.<\/p>\n
A senior official at the online payments firm said the State Department had told it that the activities of the website were illegal in the US.<\/p>\n
PayPal suspended payments to Wikileaks last week, and has been followed by Visa Europe and Mastercard.<\/p>\n
Amazon and Swiss bank PostFinance have also cut ties with Wikileaks.<\/p>\n
PayPal’s clarification came from the firm’s vice-president Osama Bedier.<\/p>\n
He said the company had carried out its actions after receiving a letter from the State Department, adding that it was a “straightforward” decision.<\/p>\n
PayPal is owned by US online auction giant eBay.<\/p>\n
Legal threat<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Mastercard said that it was suspending payments to Wikileaks “until the situation is resolved”.<\/p>\n
Datacell says Visa and Mastercard’s decisions could harm its own business<\/p>\n
This was followed by Visa Europe on Wednesday, which said it would be carrying out an investigation into the whistle-blowing website.<\/p>\n
Visa Europe said it wanted to determine whether the nature of Wikileaks’ business “contravenes Visa operating rules”.<\/p>\n
Both companies are now facing the threat of legal action from the IT company that enables Wikileaks to accept credit and debit card donations.<\/p>\n
Swiss-based Datacell said it would move immediately to try to force Visa Europe and Mastercard to resume allowing payments to the whistle-blowing website.<\/p>\n
Datacell added that Visa Europe and Mastercard’s actions could harm its own business.<\/p>\n
A spokeswoman for Visa Europe said it would not be making any comment regarding Datacell at this time. Mastercard has also yet to make a statement.<\/p>\n
Mastercard has, however, commented on claims that pro-Wikileaks internet hackers had brought down its website.<\/p>\n
Mastercard said there was “no impact” on people’s ability to use their cards for transactions.<\/p>\n
Datacell’s chief executive Andreas Fink urged Visa to “just simply do their business where they are good at – transferring money”.<\/p>\n
Datacell added that the suspension would last for an initial seven days, but this has yet to be confirmed by Visa Europe.<\/p>\n
The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was arrested in London on Tuesday, connected to sexual assault allegations in Sweden.<\/p>\n
He was refused bail, but has vowed to fight extradition.<\/p>\n
via BBC News – PayPal says US advised it to stop Wikileaks payments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PayPal has said that its decision to stop users from using its service to make donations to Wikileaks was made after advice from the US government. A senior official at the online payments firm said the State Department had told it that the activities of the website were illegal in the US. PayPal suspended payments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":28529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[922],"tags":[4771,4540],"class_list":["post-28527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-paypal","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}