Why is Skrill pulling out of Canada?

Does online e-cash processor Skrill (formerly Moneybookers) know something that everyone else does not? That’s the question several industry observers were asking as the news broke this week that the European-based company is to pull out of Canadian transactions with effect from January next year.

Skrill, which was taken over by the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners earlier this year broke the news to Canadian online punters in an email, but failed to include cogent reasons for its decision, merely advising that it has “reviewed its operations,” giving the exit date and saying merchant transactions would cease at the end of January 2014.

Player forums picked up on the news quickly, trying to figure out why Skrill would want to abandon a potentially lucrative market when there was no legal obstacle to its success.

Skrill has a service provider licence from the New Jersey regulator in that rapidly growing new online gambling market, and that suggested to some commentators that the motivation for the exit may be related to the growing importance of the US state by state legalisation trend.

In related news, Playtech‘s Titan Poker presented Canadians with another conundrum this week; having announced recently that it would exit Canada on December 22 as part of the still-unexplained EuroPartners pull-out, the iPoker site tweeted that it was going to stick around and even offered new promotional bonuses.

Canadian players can be forgiven for being confused by these badly communicated corporate antics.