I would want to see regulations where banks are explicitly forbidden from blocking legal transactions. If it's legal then banks should have no choice but to handle it.
More likely to get the opposite.
Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
121–130 of 288 posts
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#122Reluctant? I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Journalism today "What you don't know about the sky could kill you! Journalist uncovered the truth the sky is actually blue!"
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#123I always thought that cryptocurrencies and the whole circuit around them are "useful" in the sense that they provide an alternative to the Mastercard / VISA duopoly - see all the "free speech" platform that were refused by CC circuits and at the moment are alive only thanks to crypto payments. Obviously, a day will come when the biggest processors (ie Coinbase) will be forced to not accept certain clients / transacti…
Agreed.
The relevant point, to me, has always been that CCs never needed to work perfectly for the payment use case, they just had to work well enough to be a viable alternative (warts and all).
The fact that some of them do fill this role and have since their creation, namely bitcoin, is what makes me pay attention to the space.
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#124financial firms block payments to the individuals on a list which today runs to 1,604 pages.
The "Nock list" is 1,604 pages ?
Cannabis, online poker, porno ? Sounds more like religious fanatics attempting to exercise control over lifestyles, not taxation concerns.
Good thing we have crypto and it's rapidly evolving ease of use . . .
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#125What do you mean, "are becoming"? They have always been. If the payment processors don't want to be associated with a service, they'll refuse to handle payments and then there's simply no way for the service providers to get paid. See wikileaks and other "problematic" sites. Advertisers are also regulators. I've seen sites start heavily censoring themselves because someone complained to Google and they pulled the ads…
This is a recent situation. Back in the early 00's, paying for something online with a credit card, other than porn, was a novelty. I think things started to change in the late 00's. I remember a LOT of software being sold online (licenses and such) was sold via money orders or sometimes wire transfers.
I was accepting credit cards online from 1994 (although I have to confess now that the business is defunct that the form—which didn't use https(!)—just emailed the entry to me(!)). My first order from Amazon was in 1997 (it was two books: The Psychology of Religion and Varieties of Religious Experience). I bought a number of musical instruments online with credit cards as early as 1998. Buying things from individuals was a bit dicey for a while, with a lot of trust involved where you'd send a check or money order to the seller and hope they'd send the promised merchandise. Paypal did a lot to mitigate that, and I opened my Paypal account in 1999.
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#126What do you mean, "are becoming"? They have always been. If the payment processors don't want to be associated with a service, they'll refuse to handle payments and then there's simply no way for the service providers to get paid. See wikileaks and other "problematic" sites. Advertisers are also regulators. I've seen sites start heavily censoring themselves because someone complained to Google and they pulled the ads…
In a world where cash is starting to dissapear, payment processors and banking in general should be regulated and treated just like some sort of utility company (Ex: Water, electricity). Advertising is a different beast altogether. Being able to to exchanges (money for goods, etc) is something quite a basic right(If I can call it that). That doesn't apply to making money though. I don't think it's normal in any way t…
How credit card processing hasn't been classified and regulated as a utility is truly baffling to me. Especially with governments explicitly recommending contactless card payments instead of cash during the pandemic and many doing things like taking large bank notes out of circulation for years now.
We don't need crazy things like crypto - we need decentralised and accountable banks and payment processors (not that the distinction between the two makes any sense either). Speaking of credit card companies: why do they exist?? Why can't my card just sign a digital request for transfer and tell the POS terminal to send it to my bank to be executed. A room of computer science students could write an open standard for that in like a month and have a working implementation within the year.
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In a world where cash is starting to dissapear, payment processors and banking in general should be regulated and treated just like some sort of utility company I'm not sure if you are missing contacts or providing irony. But the fact is payment processors and banking in general is extremely heavily regulated. A few years ago when you saw almost all banks and payment companies starting to crack down on spending mon…
I think they're saying the regulations should include not excluding someones legal business because you 'dislike it' ala WikiLeaks.
Todays finance regulators require you to not do business with some people, often without good evidence.
For example, if you do business with wikileaks, you will get a nudge from the regulator to 'reduce the number of high risk clients' you work with... They're not saying it's illegal, but they're also saying they're going to find some regulation to prosecute you with unless you do as they say.
It's a sad state of affairs when these kind of regulations aren't written in stone, but instead are flexible and applied on a case-by-case basis.
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#128I would want to see regulations where banks are explicitly forbidden from blocking legal transactions. If it's legal then banks should have no choice but to handle it.
The biggest problem with this is that we already have regulations than punish banks for processing illegal transactions. If you don't want that, and you want the banks not to refuse any legal transactions, that's easy. They then don't refuse to process any transactions at all. If you do want them to refuse illegal transactions, and they're allowed to refuse legal transactions, that makes it easy for the bank because…
> a mistake in either direction would incur penalties.
It seems reasonable to just make the fines small, and the bank can try to minimize them by having their policies match what a court will find for those which are taken to court.
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem with this is that we already have regulations than punish banks for processing illegal transactions. If you don't want that, and you want the banks not to refuse any legal transactions, that's easy. They then don't refuse to process any transactions at all. If you do want them to refuse illegal transactions, and they're allowed to refuse legal transactions, that makes it easy for the bank because…
It should not be so much whether it is legal or illegal in the strict sense. The question is whether bank has sufficient evidence to suspect that illegal activity is taking place. So bank should be held liable if they: - do not collect evidence - do not act on evidence - if they act without evidence The bank should face appropriate penalties for making misjudgments in both directions. For example, you should have a r…
> Banks are obliged by the law to provide basic financial services (bank account and identification services if I recall correctly) to EU residents as part of the European Single Market
While offering a "Basic bank account" is a legal requirement, they have no requirement to offer that service to any specific person. In reality, it typically means that they're offered to people in debt, but not to people the bank doesn't like, american citizens, prisoners, etc.
Re: Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web
#130I don't think they're that reluctant, honestly.
But it goes beyond credit card companies too. It applies to the whole banking system.
It will soon be the case where the majority of Americans live in states where recreational cannabis is legal (it was ~1 in 3 last year but NY, NJ and others will push it over). Yet you can't use a credit card to buy cannabis pretty much anywhere AFAIK.
Worse, dispensaries have to operate on an all-cash basis because they simply can't get bank accounts.
Granted, the legality of cannabis is a grey area since states allow it but the Federal government still maintains it as illegal.
I personally don't like the financial system being gatekept for legal activity this way.
Whether or not they could is a legal question. It seems though they're happy to appease politicians and "values" voters by virtue signaling on these issues, however.
As for sex work, in particular, this one is tricky. While I fully support body autonomy and in an ideal world, sex-for-money and the like should be legal, it's not that simple in reality. Why? Because the sex industry is deeply tied to human trafficking. I have no idea how to solve that problem.