Visa, MasterCard and AmEx donations restart for WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks was given a boost yesterday with the lifting of the payment blockade enforced by credit card companies for the past seven months.

DataCell, the Icelandic payment processor that handles the WikiLeaks account, has issued a statement saying that it can now receive funds from supporters via an alternative payment processor on a dedicated web site.

The company can also accept payments from American Express for the first time.

DataCell and WikiLeaks threatened legal proceedings last week against Visa and MasterCard in the Danish courts and the European Commission over the ban, and have vowed to pursue the action.

"We choose to interpret this as Visa and MasterCard giving in to our demand that the payment services were reinstated," a statement on DataCell's web site reads.

"DataCell is happy that our threats of legal action have had this effect. But the battle is by far not over! We will initiate the lawsuit in Denmark to get compensated for our losses in the last seven months, and we consider it likely that we will file the complaint before the European Commission."

The credit card companies imposed the ban on payments to WikiLeaks after the site published stolen US diplomatic cables, claiming that the ban was in order to check the legality of such an action.

A study commissioned by Visa showed no indication of illegal activity, but the blockade remained, despite repeated distributed denial-of-service attacks by hackers.

The fund injection will come at a crucial time for WikiLeaks. Site co-founder Julian Assange's legal difficulties are a drain on resources, and the organisation was already low on funds before the blockade was imposed.

Visa, MasterCard and American Express had not responded to requests for comment at the time of going to press.