Payment providers should not be able to control what users are or are not allowed to purchase with their cards. It’s a downward spiral. Electronic payment is a necessity in nowadays life.
As long as it’s a legal transaction, the providers should STFU.
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Liability?
There isn’t as far as I know and there shouldn’t ever be.
In many states, and federally, marijuana sales aren’t legal transactions, and that’s the point. I don’t think Mastercard is necessarily doing anything wrong here, they’re just covering their asses. This one is on our politicians who are still dragging their heels on legalizing marijuana.
Sets a precedent though, and implies that the card companies are responsible for what people buy. First it’s drugs, then it’s porn, liquor, gender affirming items and hormones, contraceptives, or whatever else the fascists don’t like. Companies won’t want to be fined by the fascist right once they start pushing to ban things.
Mastercard is adhering to federal laws, not taking a moral stand. Credit card companies aren’t obligated to facilitate illegal transactions. If they were banning something whose sale was completely legal, there would be a argument to be made here, but that’s not what’s happening. They aren’t going to go after porn, liquor, gender affirming items, hormones, or contraceptives, unless some fascists ban them, at which point it’s not the credit card companies restricting you, it’s the fascists. Go after the fascists.
What federal law are they adhering to? Mastercard isn’t buying the drugs they are denying a person access to the funds that that person already owns. Mastercard should be agnostic to what the person uses that money for.
It sets a precedent that card companies are responsible for what their client’s purchase, and can reject transactions based on what their clients are purchasing, not how much money/credit they have.
I can go after corporate shitheads and fascists especially when they are holding each other’s cocks.
The fact that marijuana is still federally classified as a Schedule I drug. Why would you think credit card companies should allow cardholders to make illegal transactions using their credit cards? Do you think they’d be okay with people using their credit cards to purchase child pornography? Or hitmen? Trafficked persons? What about 100 kilos of cocaine? I’m aware marijuana isn’t as bad as any of those things, and it’s way past time for the laws to be updated, but the fact remains it’s still against the law to purchase it. To argue they have no obligation to make sure they aren’t facilitating in illegal actions is absurd. As far as I know they’ve never allowed illegal transactions to be made, so absolutely no precedent is being set here.
Why should I care what a person is buying? So what if they are buying hitmen or 100 kilos of cocaine? If and when they get caught they will go to prison. It’s not Mastercard’s job to police the system.
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It’s not a defense of corporations to point out that the root cause of this problem is the laws, you illiterate baby. “Corporations follow existing laws if they protect their profits” isn’t a surprise to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Fix the laws around marijuana and the rest of the issue solves itself.
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I’ll never use Mastercard out of principle after this. Fuck them.
You do realize that there are no banks in the United States that will allow marijuana related business to work with them either, right?
It’s highly illegal under federal law. My business is done business with marijuana related businesses in the past, and they all have to operate with cash and hand only. It’s insane.
Nothing like carrying a suitcase full of $250,000 in small sequential unmarked bills to the bank you know…
Cannabis users should move to ban Mastercard.
Payment processors have a functional monopoly and should not be permitted to refuse or otherwise be punitive to any category of purchase.
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These aren’t credit cards, but debit cards. It’s access to money you have already earned, is in the bank, you own, and Mastercard is saying you can’t spend it on a particular thing. You get around this by doing an ATM cash withdrawal, but it’s still an extra step, and it’s still a megacorp restricting your access to something that the law does not.
This is lame. Mastercard telling people what not to by is outrageous but not the first time they’ve done this.
What else have they done? I had no idea this was even legal.
they did it with pornhub at least
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Ok, I’ll just switch, they already ban porn purchases 👍
That’s a very dumb business move, it might be illegal for then to do that in Canada
It should be illegal for a company to limit what you can purchase anywhere in the world.
Under the law, they literally have to limit transactions for illegal goods, otherwise they become complicit in that crime.
The real stupidity is that Marijuana is still illegal under federal law.
