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Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque. A local company who makes swords (very nice ones) ran into an i

• calvinmorrison 1y ago
  Paypal blocked our entire account because we sold a product called "La Aroma De Cuba", a cigar manufactured in nicaragua. No discussion would resolve it. We regexed the product name on the payload to replace it with LADC and we were reinstated.
  • devmor 1y ago
    I had a similar experience with a payment processor for a client that sold manufacturing accessories for a completely benign industry - but one morning they were suddenly cut off and forbidden from processing all transactions. The payment gateway would not tell us why, just that the account was permanently suspended for “service violations”. We had to quickly onboard them onto a new gateway, and while testing in their sandbox environment a rep saw the issue. Turned out one of their products ended up with an auto-generated part code that had the four-letter term for sexual assault in it. That was it.
    • viraptor 1y ago
      I wonder how many rapeseed oil sellers ran into this. Scunthorpe problem strikes again.
    • johnnyanmac 1y ago
      You'd think we'd be passsed basic word filters for major industries like this. I guess all grapevines (and wineries, by extension) are screwed as well. And people wonder why many are anxious about AI. Garbage in, garbage out. Automating the process amplifies that.
  • catlikesshrimp 1y ago
    Is there any chance that "La aroma de Cuba" brand is associated to tobacco, while LDAC sounds more like a sound codec? Tobacco might be the issue in that case. I am in no way implying there is no Cuban embargo, nor Cuban censorship. By the way, why is the name "La aroma de Cuba" and not "El aroma de Cuba"?
    • nailer 1y ago
      > Is there any chance that "La aroma de Cuba" brand is associated to tobacco The post you are replying to mentions it is a cigar.
      • Igrom 1y ago
        Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
        • calvinmorrison 1y ago
          a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke - Rudyard Kipling
    • duskwuff 1y ago
      It was 100% because the name contained the word "Cuba". Source: had the exact same problem with PayPal about ten years ago, except the trigger word was the name of another sanctioned country.
    • calvinmorrison 1y ago
      it was a tobacco retailer. we did plenty with PeePal
  • bell-cot 1y ago
    At least in the US, tobacco products are generally subject to pretty strict state & local regulations and taxes. Might that have been the issue?
    • stronglikedan 1y ago
      They sell tobacco products, so they would know that's not the issue.
      • calvinmorrison 1y ago
        actually it's a huge issue. we had to use a non-good tech stack credit card provider that constantly went down becuase they were the only ones who would take us because we sold tobacco. No braintree or auth.net just some janky stuff from the 90s because that was the only company that fit our risk profile. The amount of times we got paged because we coudlnt take cards was ridiculous, because we couldn't ever do anything about it.
• jajko 1y ago
  I hate to say it, but one more reason for crypto or any other alternatives. Those companies became too central and crucial. And with power always comes pressure from various sides and corruption.
  • xandrius 1y ago
    Why do you hate to say that a non-centralised approach is better than a strict duopoly?
    • bad_haircut72 1y ago
      Crypto is obviously not without its own issues
      • seanclayton 1y ago
        Yes it, too, has its issues. It appears no system is perfect.
    • shortrounddev2 1y ago
      Because Crypto has historically found more use as a form of high tech gambling and vehicle for fraud than it has as actual currency
      • asterix_pano 1y ago
        Because almost no administration was ready to regulate it until recently. Payment and remittances are such obvious use cases but if every transaction create a tax event, it's also too cumbersome to implement for most merchant.
        • shortrounddev2 1y ago
          If the government has to regulate cryptocurrency for it to be useful as a currency, then it's not very useful as a decentralized currency, is it? In my view, most cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, at the very least) are built on fundamentally unsound economic principles which incentivize hoarding and speculation.
• tracker1 1y ago
  I've seen this happen to a lot of businesses around all kinds of arms, even if not directly selling weapons, but doing training, etc. I've also seen social media figures who are prominently politically oriented face similar issues with donation platforms due to pressure from payment processors/cc companies. It's really icky to say the least. There's plenty of groups I'd love to see debanked on a personal level... that said, I think it's entirely wrong for anyone not breaking domestic laws where they are.
  • cyanydeez 1y ago
    Thankfully, politics is now a arm of corporate policies so theres really no real concerns about fascism.
    • quantified 1y ago
      Don't forget the </sarcasm> tag.
  • axus 1y ago
    Can you buy a gun with a credit card in the US? I presume yes. Why would other weapons be different?
    • monocasa 1y ago
      Yes, you can.
    • Ferret7446 1y ago
      Because Visa said so presumably, which is the issue at hand.
    • giantg2 1y ago
      Becuase guns have higher protections, more stringent seller regulations, and advocacy groups. In some localities, things like swords can be illegal to own. The dealers generally don't need a special license. With guns, you have an FFL which is heavily regulated. So as a payment processor, there's a greater chance that a merchant selling a sword might be violating the law than an FFL selling a gun. Then the advocacy groups for guns are much more active than the ones for knives and swords.
• shagie 1y ago
  > Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque. Yes... but if payment processors are going to be charged in criminal cases that involve the use of their systems for purchasing things that are illegal, then they have an interest in not being in that situation. From earlier this year: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-whistleblower-says-mastercard-visa-failed-stop-payments-child-sex-abuse-2025-01-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-whistleblower-says-maste... > Jan 24 (Reuters) - Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website OnlyFans, according to allegations in a previously undisclosed whistleblower complaint filed with the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit. > The whistleblower, a senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries, said the two giant card companies knew their networks were being used to pay for illegal content on the porn-driven site since at least 2021, and accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.” And from 2022: https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/company-news/we-do-not-tolerate-network-illegal-activity.html https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/compan... > On Friday, July 29, a federal court issued a decision in ongoing litigation involving MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub and other websites. In this pre-trial decision, the court denied Visa’s motion to be removed from the case on a theory that Visa was complicit in MindGeek’s actions because Visa payment cards were used to pay for advertising on MindGeek sites, among other claims. We strongly disagree with this decision and are confident in our position. Given this, it is a completely reasonable position for payment processors to decide not to touch anything that they can be brought into legal liability. They'd likely prefer not being gatekeepers of money, but if they're going to be brought into a court and sued each time someone uses them to purchase something that may be illegal, they're going to take steps to not be brought into court.
  • the8472 1y ago
    Well, then stop doing those transactions in <country>, not globally. Why am I not allowed to buy something just because some organization in <country> threatens lawsuits there or whatever? In other cases multi-nationals (e.g. AWS) are perfectly willing to claim that they're operating a local company under local laws and you can totally trust them to protect local customers from extraterritorial government reach. Additionally, if this were only about legal risk to the payment processors themselves there would be no reason for them to demand that those games are delisted. They'd only have to refuse supporting the transaction. The game stores could continue to list them and require different payment methods.
• zzo38computer 1y ago
  I prefer to pay in cash when I can do so. I think payment by cash and by barter will be better, in situations where that works. However, for computer payment, I had another idea is to make a "computer payment file" that contains the order division and payment division, and with encryption and signature, and send that to them. You will first receive the file telling what payments are acceptable and can use that to make the file to send to them. Stallman mentioned the possibility of payment by cash by pay phones (or with a prepaid phone card), so that might be one way to do it, too; after you figure out the price, you can receive the payment code and include that in the payment file. Other methods of payment would be possible (e.g. store credit), so the payment file can work independently of what kind of payment.
  • KetoManx64 1y ago
    Overcomplicated and unnecessary considering that Bitcoin and lightning exist and are growing exponentially every month. Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.
    • yieldcrv 1y ago
      It’s funny because lightning recreates this article’s problem
      • jgilias 1y ago
        Genuinely curious, how so?
        • yieldcrv 1y ago
          Lightning channels are centralized entities with their own fee structures They can be opened peer to peer, or hop between other channels, similar to dns routing They are prefunded with a certain quantity of bitcoin that dictates the size of bitcoin that can move in that route at once - although smaller denominations can go through in rapid succession this just means more fees levied All of this incentivizes a larger channel to be created by a well funded party, which can be coaxed into censoring transactions because they are a payment processor or institutional service. Likely an incumbent such as Visa joining the lightning network as a victim of LN’s own success. There are some mitigations built in and actively developed. We are 8 years deep into Lightning.
• kelseyfrog 1y ago
  > Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque. This is what the end-game of unspooling government functions into the private sector looks like. The decision still has to be made, but rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars where optics and boycott pressure are the levers of change for our collective rights.
  • iAMkenough 1y ago
    > rather than petitioning representatives to arrive at a democratic solution, we have to appeal to corporations and fight public opinion turf wars This sums up my experience with my representatives in recent years. You only get a meeting with my reps if you're a large donor or you cause enough public outrage. Otherwise they feel no obligation to their constituents and hope that the automated form letter (in varying font sizes and colors between paragraphs) they send you in response is enough to appease you.
  • Ferret7446 1y ago
    Not quite, the payment processor monopoly is maintained in part due to regulation, so the government has a hand in this private-public scheme, and this would not happen if there were competition, which is why porn sites and such often accept crypto now.
    • const_cast 1y ago
      No, the monopoly is natural and obvious. It would have always happened. Do you, as a developer, want to wrangle together 20 different payment processors so you can sell shitty 100% polyester T-shirts? No. Do I, as a customer, want to have to carry around 20 different cards just so I have a chance at being able to pay at an arbitrary merchant? No. And do I, as a business, want to pay for the additional complexity of managing fees across so many processors? No. So everyone actually wants the same thing: very, very few payment processors.
  • Dylan16807 1y ago
    > The decision still has to be made Well, not really. Right now we're making two separate decisions. One for what is legal to sell, and one for what you can meaningfully sell. Those shouldn't be different, so the latter decision shouldn't be happening.
• ffjffsfr 1y ago
  > gatekeeping and censorship that's a weird thing to say about simply banning payments to people who profit from rape and incest content. > AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on it is very clear what is going on, they are making content profiting from rape and incest and they are getting punished for it.
  • duxup 1y ago
    I don't think you read my post entirely / clearly.
    • ffjffsfr 1y ago
      I don't think you read the post you are commenting about. Article says explicitly what is the problem with problematic content. It explicitly mentions rape and incest content.
      • duxup 1y ago
        You quoted my words, if you aren’t interested what I was saying/ my example … don’t reply to me or quote me then?
      • const_cast 1y ago
        Is this content legal, or do you just personally find it objectionable? Because, no offense, nobody cares what you find objectionable. You could've replaced "rape and incest content" in your comment with "silly content" and it would've had the same impact. Not that I don't think rape or incest are objectionable, of course I do. I just don't think I or you get to make that determination. I'm self-absorbed, but not that self-absorbed. That's a collective decision that should be made.
  • pixxel 1y ago
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• wwweston 1y ago
  Having gatekeepers isn’t so much the problem — there’s stuff almost everyone agrees should be gatekept (and other things that maybe should be even when not everyone agrees). The problem is that we build these systems where no one seems to want to or have incentive to thin about responsible administration, reasonable feedback, appeal, and accountability. Everybody who can just gets lawyers that work to insulate themselves, sometimes because they don’t give a damn and sometimes because that’s what the incentives of exposure sometimes abused are.
  • ozim 1y ago
    Article is about how angry crowd just overwhelmed support lines for those companies. Let’s just think why it would not be feasible to build proper system. Maybe because bunch of angry assholes would take it down instantly filing bogus claims.
    • wwweston 1y ago
      Upvoted, bad user behavior isn’t the only factor incentivizing poor feedback systems, but it’s one of them.
• Molitor5901 1y ago
  It's essentially a duopoly that should be broken up.
• 111111IIIIIII 1y ago
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• lenerdenator 1y ago
  I love how the thing that got the pushback wasn't some small business getting screwed without recourse, but cutting off gooner games. Ah, priorities.
  • AlexandrB 1y ago
    That's not really surprising. The size of the audience for the latter >> the size of the audience for the former. Most people aren't going to go out of their way to sit on the phone for hours because a small business in another country is being treated unfairly.
  • duxup 1y ago
    It's always funny to me how may of the local small business folks align themselves with what they think are business friendly politicians. Those politicians don't care about them ... they care about big business and big business doesn't care about small / happy to push them out of the way.
  • johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Consumers don't necessarily care about businesses, they care about products. And even then they will feel like bad products getting screwed "deserved it". But when they value something and it's taken away, yea. Recipe for mass anger.
    • lenerdenator 1y ago
      Well, in this case, what do they value?
  • thunderfork 1y ago
    [dead]
• Yeul 1y ago
  If an airline company treats you like trash you can shame them on social media and book with someone else next time. Why would Visacard care about complaints? You need them more than they need you...
• getpokedagain 1y ago
  Are we surprised at this outcome? Most of HN encourages forming companies to find a niche in the world, build an arbitrage over it and charge rent. Payment processors and banks do that. Just like startup founders they then listen to the stakeholders with the biggest wallets. It turns out prude Christians have fucking money and apparently more than horny gamer bros.
• Khaine 1y ago
  The US Government has forced payment processors to be gatekeepers through legislation like AML/CTF