The CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal Holdings and Stripe received letters Thursday from Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, who demanded they not discriminate against customers based on political or religious grounds.
The FTC threatened enforcement action if customers are denied services for those reasons.
Any act to “deplatform customers or deny them access to financial products or services” may violate the Federal Trade Commission Act and “could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action,” the agency said in a Thursday press release. The FTC didn’t cite any specific infractions by the companies.
The commission is typically made up of five members, but has just two at the moment. President Donald Trump last fired two of the Democrats who sat on the commission.
Crypto could replace all these companies
There are issues with speed/capacity of payments, and if the wrong crypto is used (i.e. those with proof of work, like Bitcoin, instead of proof of stake) it’s an environmental disaster.
Hardly issues at this point
Bitcoin isn’t the only crypto
So name a cryptocurrency that doesn’t have a scalability issue, and that could handle the volumes of transactions that the global credit card payment processors do.
Solana would be the leader here and in lab tests can hit 100,000 TPS. VISA averages 45,000 TPS globally. Not bad for an unfinished product.
Oh right we hate technology around here
So then we help the Trump kids and David Ballsacks make bank from their crypto investments. No thanks.
macroeconomists famously love deflation they think it’s really good
Every accusation is a confession, tjere are seemingly no exceptions.
🤦…here we go again
Somebody’s about to do something fucking horrific again.
You know who will suffer the harshest consequences though?
yeah this isn’t suspicious at all.
And certainly wouldn’t be selectively enforced anyway. This is 100% “rules for thee not for me” shit.
Like if they get debanked for “religious” or “political” reasons (esp. when they are the ones politicizing literally everything), it’s a crime.
Things that they consider political but sensible people consider “human rights”, tho? They sleep.
Totally a slow reaction to all the right wing stuff like info wars that was being debanked a number of years ago.
Wikileaks? What was that?
Credit card companies are just more middle-men in a whole sea of them. trump would rather you borrow from his “bankers”. Easy-credit but the vig will kill you.
That is for conservatives only though. The judges on the ICC who have been debanked for ruling against Netanyahu can pound sand.
Nazis say that you are required to let Nazis be your customers. Also that you don’t have to serve people you don’t want to when it fits their narrative.
Well, to a nazi only nazis are people.
I don’t trust this administration to enforce this fairly or evenly at all. And even then, they shouldn’t be able to discriminate for any fucking reason. They are a payment processor! It’s like your utility company saying what you can and can’t use the electricity you pay for for.
Process the fucking payments, payment processors.
Nobody is being “debanked” except Trump, and it’s because his accounts were tied to criminal activity, not politics.
Stop committing crime, and you can put the money in a bank.
Meanwhile, MAGA is talking about making it illegal for undocumented people to have bank accounts. So who is actually denying banking privileges based on politics?
FUCK YOU demented rapist toady
So I guess blocking payments to porn sites or whatever they were doing before is supposed to stop. Right? Right?
The right is mostly aligning with that, unless you’re talking about those young alt-righters, who are following a suggestion found on a pro-lolicon forum religiously.
didn’t they debank the ICC ? and Francesca Albenese for her political views ?
Yes, they are projecting.
Ah but its okay to disenfranchise those whose politics dont fit the federal narrative innit
Has this actually happened, or just playing the victim again?
The linked article has more info: https://www.bankingdive.com/news/occ-debanking-report-jpmorgan-bofa-citi-wells-fargo-pnc-td-bmo-capital-one-trump-gould/807685/
The OCC expressed concern that, between 2020 and 2025, the banks restricted access or required “escalated reviews and approvals before providing … access” to certain customers with connections to oil and gas, coal, firearms, private prisons, tobacco, payday lending, adult entertainment, digital assets or political action committees and political parties.
It’s that last part that, presumably, spurred President Donald Trump in January to accuse Bank of America – while its CEO was on stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – of debanking conservatives.
“We called ourselves the MOD Squad, short for Merchants of Death.”
Looks like Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms have a whole new set of friends.
Ah yes. When i read the fascist FTC head sent the letter — a criminal who threatens antifascist media for political speech — I was certain consequences will only apply to debanking fascists.
Thanks, but that article doesn’t mention too many specifics either. I am going to assume that if someone was denied service it’s because they are criminals, not conservatives. The line is blurry though.
There was a big deal last year after Mastercard and Visa threatened the indie game site itch.io for allowing adult games, after a single complaint from an Australian anti-porn group.
Payment processors shouldn’t be gatekeepers of what we can buy. They should just process the payments and take their cut for being a middleman.
I thought about that when I heard about this, but it looks like this will not stop Visa and MasterCard from continuing to threaten everyone who is not ‘equal’ enough
Everyone in the West cheered when Visa and MasterCard cut Russia off their processing by their own initiative. Now in the past year Europeans suddenly realized what this might mean, and are clamoring for a pan-European payment processor. While Russia already had one of their own for ages.
Realistically, it’s likely that someone with money was denied access, and used their money to hire lobbyists to make this a political problem.
Trump was debanked after Jan 6th, this is just retaliation for banks choosing not to do business with fascists and insurrectionists.
