[Hock_]

So I was at a dinner party tonight and by total coincidence ended up talking to some guy who's (partly) responsible for a major financial institution's compliance with the UIGEA. Now I know that at least some of this has been posted about here before, and maybe there's nothing new here, but FWIW:

he said, for starters, that the proposed regs are due to be out by early July, but that it looks like they'll actually be issued earlier. He said that his bank is ready to start blocking transactions as soon as he gets instructions from his legal department. The blocking will be based on some kind of 4-digit code associated with all online financial transactions. Apparently, though, it's not that simple, since there's one code for ALL gambling-related transactions, including lotteries and horse racing. Which means that to block only transactions covered by the UIGEA, they'll need also to screen the "POS" information of the transaction, which will be much more difficult.

Finally, he volunteered that the easy way around the (expected) regs, will be for the sites just to use a code different from the one for gambling.

Overall a somewhat encouraging conversation.