Payment processors are government licensed oligopolies and if private processors can deny service for no reason, then the goverment should set up its own with a universal service obligation.
If making and receiving payments is considered a necessary utility posting and handling large amounts of cash is restricted, then providers should not have a right to deny service to customers who are not taking payments in violation of the law, regardless of distasteful their activities may be.
Would you agree if the state sided with electrical or water utilities to be able to refuse service to a customer such as brothel, on the grounds that their activitites where distasteful and immoral, not matter how legal?
That would be fine if the person denied service had the right to connect to a river or a well, lay down their own pipes and power and draw their water and electricity directly, but those rights are curtailed by the state, and it requires certain permissions and rights to do those.
The same can be said of online payments and credit card payments. They have become a necessary utility so much so that brothels and panhandlers have credit card machines. If private providers can deny such service arbitrarily then the state must become the providers of last resort.
Payment processors are a natural monopoly and as such they should be regulated like utilities, i.e. not allowed to deny service without good reason. Unfortunately the government rather likes having a way to destroy the livelihoods of undesirables without any of that pesky due process.
I believe that any payment processor should be prohibited from denying any legal business its services. Its a restraint of trade and should not be permitted.
I think payment services really come under 'utilities' or 'essential services', if not quite 'human rights'.
And thus processors should be required by law to provide service to everyone unless they are clearly doing something illegal, and even then, it's a matter for the police and courts, not private corporations or individuals.
If you agree that the government should be a universal payment processor, then you must agree that the government should set itself as a universal payment processor "first", before granting the oligopolies they have licensed the right to deny service for no legal reason.
Surely the judiciary has a monopoly on punishment of 'crimes'.
But I agree with your overall point. Payment processors should be seen as public utilities that people have a right to. It shouldn't be up to private companies, who has access to that.
This is exactly the fight you should be having -- the government should be a universal payment processor. I agree wholeheartedly. I am arguing again the people who state that a corporation should be obligated to serve a non-protected class.
if private processors can deny service for no reason
Ah yes, the "no reason" of being violence-inciting Nazis. What a reasonless judgement.
The incumbent payment processors are not utilities.
Now, arguably, there should be a fallback payment system with utility-like requirements for universal service that can be cutoff only with due process (certainly, that's needed on the consumer side of banking to deal with the problem of the unbanked, but there's arguably good cause of it on the merchant side of financial exchange as well.) For one thing, an explicit guarantee would make it harder for government officers from using informal pressure on private payment processors as a means to punish targets while evading due process, which it has historically done quite often, with the deniability that it is a free decision.
That's not how the US presently works -- see things like the ADA or discrimination laws, which regulate how a business may deny service and what accommodations for customers they must provide.
It's not absurd that an essential civil service -- payment processing -- should be regulated to uphold our collective standards of freedom, and not use their privileged position to impose their private moral standards on society.
Then isn't the issue actually that payment processors should be more regulated?
The courts do have a monopoly on certain types of punishment, like prison. Other, informal types, such as declining to do business with somebody, are available to individuals and companies. I don't see that as a contradictory or undesirable situation.
If a handful of payment processors can decide who can get money or not, it sounds like you need laws to force them to be neutral. Imagine if you couldn't put a truck on a road because the road is owned by someone that doesn't like your business!
The alternative would be that payment processors don’t deny anyone unless a government regulator tells them to, and then it’s the regulator’s responsibility to draw the line.
It certainly wouldn’t be perfect either, but at least there would be some measure of legislative/electoral accountability.
I'm not claiming payment processors are moral. I'm asking if the freedom to refuse unethical business should be your right. I was responding to the position of a parent comment that processors should accept even illegal transactions.
Of course you contact the police in the situation I described. Do you accept the payment though or do you refuse the transaction? You keep avoiding a specific yes or no question.
IMO payment processing should be regulated as a utility. When cash is no longer an option, governments must not be ceding control of who can pay whome for whatever to private entities like Visa. The moral crusade against pornhub is an example of what can go wrong in the future. What right does a Christian backed activist group have that lets them get in the way of me, my money, and purveyors of porn on the internet?
This is probably true, but I for one would like to see some kind of protection for payment processors. Not because I feel sorry for them, but because an ordinary person's day-to-day life can become massively disrupted or nearly impossible without them, and a company might be essentially punished without trial. Perhaps payment processors could be responsible only for banning customers that are on a government-maintained blacklist (where a customer would only be added after having been found guilty of a relevant crime, obviously).
Your comment illustrates my point exactly, and I think your attitude is why payment processors will always remain as powerful as they are.
My position is that payment processors should not be the arbiters of what is allowed to be paid for by humans. I think that is your position too, but because you don't like the way I made my argument, you reply with a snarky and dismissive tone and treat me like I'm dumb.
That banks and other payment processors shouldn't be the rulers of the world is what we all must agree on and fight for if anything is ever going to change. As soon as you say "well in this case they should because I like when they do it to people I dislike," you are effectively saying that they should be all powerful, just as long as their moral compass aligns with yours.
Payment networks are utilities and should be regulated as such. You should never be able to block a legitimate payment (as a corporate entity) that isn’t associated with illegal activity.
If making and receiving payments is considered a necessary utility posting and handling large amounts of cash is restricted, then providers should not have a right to deny service to customers who are not taking payments in violation of the law, regardless of distasteful their activities may be.
Would you agree if the state sided with electrical or water utilities to be able to refuse service to a customer such as brothel, on the grounds that their activitites where distasteful and immoral, not matter how legal?
That would be fine if the person denied service had the right to connect to a river or a well, lay down their own pipes and power and draw their water and electricity directly, but those rights are curtailed by the state, and it requires certain permissions and rights to do those.
The same can be said of online payments and credit card payments. They have become a necessary utility so much so that brothels and panhandlers have credit card machines. If private providers can deny such service arbitrarily then the state must become the providers of last resort.
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