Fair Access to Financial Services
All Americans and all American businesses deserve equitable access to ordinary payment systems, with presumption of innocence, due process in disputes, and the right to appeal termination.
Payment networks are the single largest bottleneck in the financial system. They are the gatekeepers to the global economy, and they have the power to decide who gets to participate and who doesn't. This is a problem because payment networks are not neutral. They have their own interests, and they are not always aligned with the interests of the people who use them.
For decades, card networks and payment processors have stifled creativity, innovation, expression, and legitimate commerce by silently blocking businesses they don't like. They must be reined in.
Ubiquity
In 2022, the Federal Reserve determined that 63.8% of all general purchases made are transacted over a payment network like MasterCard, Visa, Discover, or Amex. For online purchases, these amounted to 89.4%. If you are not accepting credit card payments in the United States, you are practically unable to run a business.
Secrecy
Payment networks manage secret blacklists, such as MATCH. You will not be informed if you are placed on MATCH, you will not be permitted to appeal your blacklisting, and you cannot sue the companies to get off of them. You have no recourse. The list is considered a proprietary trade secret you have no right to know about.
Monolithic
Businesses interact with payment networks through payment gateways like Stripe, Square, and PayPal. These companies are the gatekeepers to the gatekeepers, and will hold you to terms of service for each and every card network they do business with, as well as their own. You are not at liberty to only do business with Visa or MasterCard, you must accept all their terms and the terms of all others. Not doing so means you are banned from the platform.
If you support a creator on crowdfunding platforms like Patreon, your money must pass through the Patreon customer terms of service, the Patreon creator terms of service, the Stripe terms of service, and then also the terms of service for every card network. Any alleged violations can result in your transaction being blocked, or the creator being banned from Patreon, even if it is a completely legitimate purchase from a legal American business.
Monopolistic
The distinction between payment network and payment gateway was originally designed to make card systems not a monopoly, but recently the card networks have been buying up their own gateways. For instance, Authorize.net is now a direct subsidiary of Visa, a company it was originally supposed to keep in check by creating competition with other card networks.
In September 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against Visa, alleging it was a monopoly and had been using its power to prevent competition in the debit card market. Visa imposes certain quotas on banks which inhibits growth and competition against the card networks.
"[A] right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings; that no one has a right to obstruct another, exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature;" Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, 24 April 1816