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.
This is interesting.
Trump sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, in January for $5 billion over what he alleged was the bank’s improper closure of his accounts in 2021 for political reasons. The bank is fighting the claims. The Trump Organization, led by the president’s sons, also sued Capital One last year over similar debanking allegations, and a federal judge last week dismissed that lawsuit, but gave the plaintiffs time to refile.
Following that link:
Trump sued JPMorgan and Dimon last month, seeking at least $5 billion in damages. He claims the alleged debanking came after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before the end of the president’s first term.
So that’s what this is about.
Trump has been debanked since the late 90s by almost all US banks, because when you bankrupt two casinos and frequently spend time with mobsters they considered loans to you “high risk” for some reason.
He’s been getting loans via Europe (mostly Deutschbank… which is also Putin’s bank of choice), and Russia, for 30 years.
That is, until he won the lottery by convincing the stupidest people alive to vote him into the highest seat of power.
So now it’s payback time against all the banks he thinks wronged him.
Not giving loans doesn’t mean debanked.
Actually, for the wealthy it does.
Trump has been very wealthy since birth. The wealthy do not have bank accounts like your average wageslave like me, where their salary gets deposited regularly and they earn interest and make withdrawls - and perhaps have an attached home loan account, etc. We earn interest in high income accounts or term deposits and then pay tax on that earning - like suckers.
The wealthy use an entirely different model that focuses on using debt as its main tool.
Their assets including real estate, share portfolios, stock options and even expensive artwork are ‘good debt’, they perhaps don’t own them fully (they may be mortgaged, loan-backed or options, etc) but they’re assets that continue to grow in value over the medium term. If they sell them or divest them for real cash it becomes income that they must pay tax on. The wealthy hate paying tax. Solution: use the assets as collateral for loans and credit lines. This is how Trump lives like a king while (previously) not having much liquid cash, and also how Elon and most ultrawealthg do it - their entire personal spending is on credit accounts - debt - and by writing as much of it off as businesses expenses (meals, travel, security, etc) it all becomes tax deductable as well.
This is the same reason a lot of business executives request most of their payment packages as stock or options - it reduces their taxable income and builds their real wealth substantially. If they want a property: mortgage against their stock & option collateral. If they need money: bank credit line with their assets as collateral.
So when banks say to a member of the 1% such as Trump “we cannot give you a loan account, your collateral/outstanding loans at other fiancial institutions/criminal associates/track record is too risky for us”, that means he cannot use that bank and must look elsewhere. He is debanked by them for his purposes.
They can use loans yes, but it’s still not what debanking means.
Btw executives get stock options because the board of directors think that gives them incentive to get the stock price up. And deferred taxes yes.
You’re being pedantic.
There are multiple types of de-banking. One explicitly applie:
“Debanking refers to the practice by financial institutions of declining or limiting financial services to businesses across whole sectors if they are assessed as having a higher money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF) risk.”
No I’m really not.
Billionaires are not the 1%… they’re the 0.1% of the 1%…
I hate that occupy wall street picked such a stupid number to pick fights with. 1% is like a high earning doctor. Well off, but not like wealthy enough to buy votes and sway elections…
Arguing semantics is kinda pointless when the message is that wealth needs to be distributed far better.
Nobody at Occupy was protesting that just the billionaires need to be taxed much more and the ten-millionaires* should stay just as-is.
*The top 1% in the USA have roughly $12 million USD net assets as of 2025. That is far more than they need to live a very comfortable life with many luxuries.
I wonder if Trump knows that?
Doesn’t matter, his base will guess what it means and eat it if he complains about it.
Nailed it, thanks.
🤦…here we go again
Somebody’s about to do something fucking horrific again.
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?
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.
This seems like a good thing at first and that makes me extra wary.
Process the fucking payments, payment processors.
didn’t they debank the ICC ? and Francesca Albenese for her political views ?
Yes, they are projecting.
That is for conservatives only though. The judges on the ICC who have been debanked for ruling against Netanyahu can pound sand.
I really hope some non-US controlled credit card issuers and processors start to exist soon.
The entire US financial system seems like such a risk to participate in these days.
I know it is not a payment processor but I think this needs more attention to what it got. The biggest smart card manufacturer was French. If they died (the company still exists but is a shadow of what it was), you’d have to thanks the NSA for it.
The English Wikipedia is lacking but you’ll find more details here : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemplus
The USA is fighting dirty to keep its position overall and we are not responding at all.
It’s not for credit cards, but Wero is coming soon to Europe!
Not “coming soon” - it’s here. I made my first Wero payment this weekend.
Oh shit nice! I’m Dutch so for me nothing changed, didn’t know it was live
iDEAL from what I know is basically Wero, just local. So you’re already kind of using it, if you do so.
I’m aware 🤣 that’s why I didn’t realize the rest of Europe could use it already
Sadly so far only Belgium, Germany, and France. Why those already managed to put in Wero while the rest hasn’t, is beyond me.
Are there actual, practical reasons? Or are other countries’ governments being lobbied too hard to not put through with Wero?
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/
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.
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.
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
Ah but its okay to disenfranchise those whose politics dont fit the federal narrative innit
Every accusation is a confession, tjere are seemingly no exceptions.
How DARE they Discriminate AGAINST the Epstein Class!
-Republicans probably!
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.
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.
