Visa reinstates WikiLeaks block after breach

Visa Europe said Friday it has reinstated its block on credit card donations to whistleblower website WikiLeaks, after discovering it had been breached. "An acquirer briefly accepted payments on a merchant site linked to WikiLeaks," Visa Europe said in a statement issued in London. "As soon as this came to our attention, action was taken with the suspension of Visa payment acceptance to the site remaining in place." DataCell, the Icelandic data hosting service provider that handles WikiLeaks' donation collection, said Thursday that credit card payments to the whistleblowing website had become possible again. "We have observed that an alternative payment processor that we have contracted with, has in fact opened the gateway for payments (to WikiLeaks) with Visa and MasterCard," DataCell said in a statement. In December, as WikiLeaks began publishing some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables, sparking an international controversy, Visa and MasterCard imposed a ban on all payments made to the site.