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.
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-visa-backlash-adult-games-removed-online-stores-steam-itchio-ntwnfb
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.