Perhaps the biggest story to break this week is all over the webmaster forum boards about how Mastercard is enforcing its rule 5.10.1 and is eliminating pre-checked cross sales.

MasterCard’s rule 5.10.1 states that a merchant cannot “sell, purchase, provide, exchange or in any manner disclose Card account number, Transaction, or personal information of or about a Cardholder to anyone other than its Acquirer, to the Corporation, or in response to a valid government demand.”

Basically it means that you can be fined as much as $50,000 a week for continuing a practice that essentially defrauds the consumer.

The Grand Vizier weighs in: “It means that all these companies that were offering $100 pay per signup- and all these guys that are banging credit cards are all fucked.”

“Here’s where the pre-checked cross sales works,” continues The Vizier.

“You go to sign up [hypothetically] for Bang Bros. or a program like it. Below the ‘join’ button is two pre-checked sales that say by joining the site you’re also getting these two other sites for $24.95 a month. You don’t see that and it’s deceptive. And Mastercard has discontinued it which means Visa will be next. And all these guys who were banging these credit cards every single month are fucked. Which kind of levels the playing field.

“Because now you’re going to have people leaning towards the rev-sharing end and getting paid monthly and going towards lower pay outs. All these companies that were doing pre-checked cross sales were scam companies that weren’t updating their sites or shooting exclusive content. They were just banging credit cards. That’s really going to put a damper on things. It’s the end of the world for some companies. It really is.”