DataCell Switzerland – the company which handles credit card transfers for WikiLeaks donations – is to take immediate legal action after Visa Europe issued a notice to suspend payments.

Both Visa and MasterCard payments have been being rejected on their donation system since around 22:30 CET yesterday. Visa expressed concerns about protecting its brand, but DataCell points out that Visa is nevertheless happy to transfer money for gambling sites and pornography services.

DataCell ehf CEO Andreas Fink said, “It is obvious that Visa is under political pressure to close us down”.

Earlier today, PayPal admitted that its decision to suspend WikiLeaks’ PayPal account was made after the US government claimed that the activities of the website were illegal in the US.