There is confusion between payment networks, gateways, and processors and how they work to censor businesses.
Financial censorship is one of the most powerful and least discussed. Where direct forms of censorship won't work, banks save the day by making businesses unprofitable.
Payment networks are
@Visa,
@Mastercard,
@Discover, and
@AmericanExpress. You cannot substitute them. They're not just credit cards, they are closed systems that a majority of commerce must pass through. Banks rely on them. Pull out your bank's checking card and you will almost certainly see the MasterCard/Visa logo on it.
Payment gateways handle private information on behalf of the payment networks, such as
@AuthorizeNet. This technical abstraction exists so that when financial censorship is done, your eyes are off the payment networks. When you mysteriously violate a network's AUP, AuthorizeNet takes the fall for them. You will never know which network told them to censor you.
Payment processors are a frontend that is most directly exposed to the customer and merchant.
@stripe is the biggest example (Stripe is also its own payment gateway). When developers put a checkout system in their website, they almost always use Stripe as their payment processor.
When you find yourself "debanked" and unable to process cards, it's probably a decision by a payment network, but you'll never know.
You're not owed an explanation, there is no appeal, there is no legal recourse, and the decision making process is considered a "trade secret" so they will never tell you.
The payment networks own the entire world's commerce and decide by themselves who gets to participate in the economy. If they decide you don't get to, you can't do anything about it.
There are smaller closed systems referred to as wallets which include
@PayPal,
@GooglePay,
@CashApp,
@Venmo, etc. These closed systems are NOT regulated the same as banks, and can get away with murder. PayPal is one of the worst companies to ever exist and almost everyone alive has a nightmare story about PayPal just straight up stealing their money.
However, from what I've seen, these wallets still fund themselves through payment networks. There's usually a few options to load a wallet, but none of them in a position to tell a payment network they're not going to play ball.
Trump's Office to the Comptroller of Currency
@USOCC attempted to pass regulatory oversight which would compel payment networks to not censor. This regulation was set to take effect April 1st, 2021. The first week Biden took office, his OCC indefinitely suspend this regulation taking effect.
occ.gov/news-issuances/news-…
occ.gov/news-issuances/news-…
This is how the deck is stacked. This is what Elon (and Bitcoin/cryptocurrency, and anyone trying to circumvent this) is up against.
With a totally digital economy and a handful of bottlenecks controlling the entire world's exchange of money, the elite have crafted the perfect system to ensure compliance and make destitute any opposition. It is a personification of evil and it rules us.
madattheinternet.substack.co…