Mega seeks alternative to PayPal
Mega, the online storage service founded by Kim Dotcom, has been left up a creek after PayPal stopped processing payments to the company.
The move has left Mega without a mainstream means of charging customers, though spokesman Stephen Hall said it was still possible for people to buy vouchers for its service.
Mega said it would not suspend customers’ accounts for nonpayment or enforce storage limits on its service until it had found an alternative for PayPal, which it hoped to do later this month.
Credit card companies Visa and MasterCard had never supported payments to Mega, meaning PayPal had been a lifeline for the firm, in which a Dotcom family trust is a minority shareholder.
Hall reiterated Kim Dotcom was no longer personally involved with the business.
Mega claimed in a blog that the chairman of the United States Senate’s judiciary committee, Patrick Leahy, had persuaded Visa and MasterCard to block payments to online services that a September report alleged were havens for copyright infringement. Mega was controversially included among the 15 companies on that list.
Mega said Visa and MasterCard had in turn ‘‘pressured’’ PayPal to follow suit.
TRS Investments, the shell company through which Mega hopes to list on the NZX, said it did not expect the development to further delay a shareholder vote on the proposed reverse takeover of the company.
That vote has already been delayed several times.
Mega has 15 million members, though most have free accounts. It charges for premium accounts that have extra features.
PayPal is no longer processing payments to Mega, which was founded by Kim Dotcom.