The only reason any company, travel or otherwise, deals with a business such as this is because no reputable bank is prepared to process credit cards for them. E Clear allegedly not only kept hold of the money for a long time but charged many times more in processing fees than any mainstream bank. It appears they were acting as lenders of last resort, when your credit is poor, you pay a heck of a lot more interest to the doorstep lender, even the legitimate ones, than if you go down to your local High Street branch of HSBC. Once you are caught in the spiral it seems very, very difficult to get out of it and any other business that has been relying on E Clear must now be in grave danger of going the same way