DataCell vs Visa case

24 Mar 2011

Early December 2010, Visa Europe has ordered the suspension of DataCell account due to the donations to WikiLeaks that came through the gateway. The same payment gateway is also used by DataCell to serve its customers for daily operations. Despite having being under heavy inspection, our acquiring partner has published a statement, where they announced that after 3 weeks of due diligence on DataCell and WikiLeaks case, they did not find anything wrong with the processes within the legal framework in place. Therefore they would like to reopen DataCell account but Visa prevents that.

On 31st December, Teller, our acquiring partner in Denmark gave their statement that they would like to reopen the account after the authority in their home country made them realize that business is not done this way.

In mid January, Icelandic Foreign Ministry had called Visa Europe to a meeting at the Embassy in London where they were asked for explanations. The only thing Visa said was that they would not open up for DataCell as long as WikiLeaks is under investigation. After the meeting DataCell hired a law firm in UK, Finers, Stephens and Innocent, to prepare a case there.

Due to this DataCell has been forced to seek it's legal right in front of judge. We have hired legal team in Iceland, Denmark and UK to present our case in the courts. Our goal is to get the justice fulfilled. We believe it's our right to conduct businesses in a legal way just like any other companies.

The status of the case is currently in the process of negotiating with our acquiring partner, with whom we have the contract with, to move the jurisdiction to Iceland where the case will, hopefully, be taken to court within short period of time. The other option is to run the show in the jurisdiction of Denmark.

The legal opinion we have got from our law firms and legal professors around the western world is, simply, Visa behaves like the worst kind of mafia with their behaviour. They even brutalize the service agreement with cardholders, who has paid the service fee to Visa in order to have Visa making their money usable wherever the card is accepted. It's not in the hands of Visa to decide what is illegal and what's not. We have been told that Visa could possibly have 4 different legal cases involved, but at least 2 cases are obvious: breach of contract and discrimination. We are obligated to correct this role of Visa in order to prevent further misuse of their monopoly position.

We will post updates on the case as soon as things clear out.