"Despite Visa and Mastercard cutting off payments to WikiLeaks, we have found some ways around the banking blockade, at least for now. We currently have a way around the blockade with FDNN who are using the French banking system Carte Bleue to accept donations for us using your Visa and MasterCard."
AFAIK Visa and Mastercard still auth/capture the card and they've just changed their gateway provider. So if the US govt does manage to designate them as a foreign terrorist organization then it will be illegal for any US company to process funds for them.
Visa Europe is a completely separate, independently operating company from Visa Inc., with an exclusive and irrevocable license to the Visa brand in Europe, fully owned by its European member banks. It's in no way a US company, so nothing the US does really matters there. I don't know MasterCard's situation.
This is all Greek to me. What is FDNN? And why is this possible now, but wasn't done before? If it's just changing a gateway provider, why did this take so long? Basically, what has changed, and how is MasterCard/Visa allowing this now?
FDNN[1] is a french association created by La Quadrature Du Net[2] ("an advocacy group defending the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet"). FDNN's goal is "to collect money and fund actions and projects whose goal is to defend and promote net neutrality, and more widely free speech on the Internet".
Why it took so long, I don't know, I guess FDNN is not used to such a big case as wikileaks.
As for why visa/mastercard accept this now, they don't, all payment are actually processed by "Carte Bleue"[3], which is
100% compatible with Visa (they get their license from the european Visa company, which despite the same name has nothing to do with the american company, they only license the brand). Those license (Visa US => Visa EU, and Visa EU => Carte Bleue) are mostly irrevocable, and getting the french banking system to "ban" you because someone high up doesn't like you is much harder than what they did in the US with wikileaks.
I do not know about the mastercard situation, but the cards are accepted pretty much anywhere here so I wouldn't be surprised if Carte Bleue had the same sort of deal with them (but every Carte Bleue is not a Mastercard, unlike Visa).
Not an expert on the subject so I might be wrong on some things, but I hope it helps clear things up.
AFAIK Visa and Mastercard still auth/capture the card and they've just changed their gateway provider. So if the US govt does manage to designate them as a foreign terrorist organization then it will be illegal for any US company to process funds for them.
From 2010 re trying to get wikileaks designated FTO: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20023941-38.html