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.
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As long as it's a legal transaction, the providers should STFU.
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
Onlyfans too
That one was due to pornhub supposedly not doing any content management to make sure illegal content (child/bestiality/ revenge porn) wasn’t available. Once pornhub put in better security measures, the providers authorized transactions again.
That’s little different from the providers revoking my businesses ability to accept credit cards if I’m found to not follow the standards required of me for SOX compliance
of course pornhub does content management. You're not gonna find a more strictly managed porn site anywhere. They instituted unprecedented regulation, most of their content was wiped and they manually verify studios to be able to upload.
and no, they did not authorize transactions again.
Payment processors have a functional monopoly and should not be permitted to refuse or otherwise be punitive to any category of purchase.
From the article: "The federal government considers cannabis sales illegal, so these purchases are not allowed on our systems," the spokesperson added.
Seems like this isn’t a Mastercard thing, but a government thing. Marijuana is still illegal at the inter-state level unfortunately.
that hasnt been being enforced for a long time, so if something's changed it'd help Mastercard's PR quite a bit to point to a government order or something.
Otherwise yeah it's a mastercard thing
It's still a non-trivial legal liability that any major company would prefer to not have.
If you could spend $1 to eliminate a 1% chance that you're going to be arrested, you're probably gonna take it.
Well, they can't stop a cash withdrawal on your card to pay for it. So, it appears they still have to pay for it in a way.
Cannabis users should move to ban Mastercard.
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.
There's nothing illegal about them blocking illegal purchases on their cards, of which the US federal government still considera marijuana illegal
Re read my comment
I only skimmed the article but it seemed US centric so I'd guess this is relevant to the US since it's not legal federally there. I was worried for a moment since I use one for my orders in Canada. Though if for some reason does happen in Canada I'm sure there'll still be some way to do online orders like with Interac or another company. Too much tax money collected for the Canadian government to just let an online revenue stream dry up from a credit lender.
This was a maneuver by VISA and MC in the Aughts when Wikileaks was publishing information embarrassing to the US Federal Government.
Pharmacies and medical doctors have long been creative about preserving privacy. Dispensaries will go back to selling tea or candy or miscellaneous OTC pharmacological product which they've been doing since prohibition if not before.
You'll not stop me! I'll just withdraw money from an ATM, and what I do with that is nacho business.
And over here in Sweden we're 99% cash-less at the moment. I tried to warn as many as possible that we do not want to give up transactional independence.
Ok, I’ll just switch, they already ban porn purchases 👍
I didn't even think you were allowed to use debit cards or credit cards to buy weed.
I use mine all the time to buy weed, but I'm in Canada, it's legal here.