I was unaware of this facet of the credit card industry, but Andrew Sorkin of The New York Times proposes to take advantage of it in the wake of the Parkland massacre:
Here’s an idea.
What if the finance industry — credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express; credit card processors like First Data; and banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — were to effectively set new rules for the sales of guns in America?
Collectively, they have more leverage over the gun industry than any lawmaker. And it wouldn’t be hard for them to take a stand.
PayPal, Square, Stripe and Apple Pay announced years ago that they would not allow their services to be used for the sale of firearms.
“We do not believe permitting the sale of firearms on our platform is consistent with our values or in the best interests of our customers,” a spokesman for Square told me.
The big financial firms don’t even have to go that far.
For example, Visa, which published a 71-page paper in 2016 espousing its “corporate responsibility,” could easily change its terms of service to say that it won’t do business with retailers that sell assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and bump stocks, which make semiautomatic rifles fire faster.
The big credit card companies have already cut off purchases of Bitcoins, although to some extent that feels like simply refusing to have intercourse with the enemy. It’s an interesting approach – as a retailer, I’d be aghast at the thought that one of the primary methods of payments these days would put limits on what could be bought with credit, and yet there is some sense in the issuers of credit putting limits on what may be bought – seeing that some purchases may indicate an imminent failure to pay by the borrower. It’s a legitimate interest. WaPo’s Avi Selk remarks:
Some have also suggested that banks could throttle gun makers from the supply side, by cutting off credit. In the past, that proposal has been a nonstarter. In 2012, Snopes investigated a report that Bank of America was cutting off credit lines to gun manufacturers. A spokeswoman for the bank denied the report, saying it had no policies against doing business with the firearms industry and pointing to a $250 million deal with a gunmaker that month.
Six years later, amid the growing outrage over the Stoneman Douglas massacre, the bank’s rhetoric sounds a bit different.
Axios reported Saturday that Bank of America was “reexamining” its relationship with AR-15 rifle manufacturers that do business with it. “We are joining other companies in our industry to examine what we can do to help end the tragedy of mass shootings,” the bank said in a statement.
This world we’re living in is getting more and more interesting. Companies sporting a conscience? How long can that last?
