WikiLeaks still gets money – thanks to Pirate Bay’s founder.

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Mastercard, PayPal, Visa and a Swiss bank has decided to choke off funding for the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, possible due to pressure by the US government.

But the whistle-blower website still has one brother-in-arms for channeling donations; a small Swedish startup founded this year by the co-founder of notorious filesharing website The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde.

Flattre is a micro-donation site, offering members a possibility to pay a small fee for internet content. Peter Sunde recently reminded his Twitter followers that they could still donate money to WikiLeaks through his site.

Donations will continue to be channelled to WikiLeaks “as long as a court does not state it is illegal”, Flattr chairman Linus Olsson told the Sydsvenskan daily. “If our users want to give money to Wikileaks, we won't say anything about it”, he said.

The idea behind Flattr was already initiated in 2007, but the first release was in 2010 "due to typical geeky laziness", the company said on its website.

Internet payment service PayPal said on Wednesday that it had suspended the account of whistleblower website WikiLeaks because it was involved in activities deemed illegal by the US government.

Several payment sites and facilitators, including PayPal, Mastercard and Visa, have suspended WikiLeaks accounts, choking off donations to the website that has been releasing confidential and embarrassing US diplomatic cables.