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With Aggressive Lobbying, Visa Puts Prepaid Card Reader Plans in Limbo: Sources
By Colby Adams
printUPDATE: Adds statements by spokespersons for Visa and ICE in the eighth, ninth and tenth paragraphs. Lobbying by the world's largest stored value payment facilitator has indefinitely delayed, and perhaps permanently blocked, a plan to give customs officials the ability to read prepaid cards, say sources. Under a project outlined in June 2011 documents drafted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Obama administration was slated to deploy mobile readers and software that would allow investigators to read the monetary values stored on prepaid cards found while executing search warrants or when transported through U.S. border crossings, airports and...
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Government often moves slowly and (hopefully) deliberatively, but one might wonder whatever happened to those pre-paid card readers being tested along U.S. borders.
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We never said compliance professionals had it easy, and 2010 doesn't look to be a year when things will be any better for the anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing industry.
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