Mastercard has broken ranks with other payment providers such as PayPal and Visa and begun allowing payments to WikiLeaks.
Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, the Bank of America and Western Union all suspended payment processing for WikiLeaks days after the site began publishing leaked US diplomatic cables in November 2010. The decision aroused the ire of hacktivist collective Anonymous which launched denial of service attacks against the websites of Mastercard, Visa et al in retaliation.
In April WikiLeaks and DataCell won a lawsuit against Valitor, the Icelandic partner for Visa and MasterCard, for breach of contract over blocking WikiLeaks' donations at the behest of credit card firms and other financial giants. The Icelandic Supreme Court ordered Valitor to recommence processing donations to WikiLeaks. Damages, if any, will be decided by a separate ongoing legal action.
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