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Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe warned of debanking consequences (www.bankingdive.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal Holdings and Stripe received letters Thursday from Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, who demanded they not discriminate against customers based on political or religious grounds.

The FTC threatened enforcement action if customers are denied services for those reasons.

Any act to “deplatform customers or deny them access to financial products or services” may violate the Federal Trade Commission Act and “could lead to an FTC investigation and potential enforcement action,” the agency said in a Thursday press release. The FTC didn’t cite any specific infractions by the companies.

The commission is typically made up of five members, but has just two at the moment. President Donald Trump last fired two of the Democrats who sat on the commission.

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[–] 182 points 5 months ago (10 children)

Trump has been debanked since the late 90s by almost all US banks, because when you bankrupt two casinos and frequently spend time with mobsters they considered loans to you "high risk" for some reason.

He's been getting loans via Europe (mostly Deutschbank.. which is also Putin's bank of choice), and Russia, for 30 years.

That is, until he won the lottery by convincing the stupidest people alive to vote him into the highest seat of power.

So now it's payback time against all the banks he thinks wronged him.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    Not giving loans doesn't mean debanked.

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  • [–] 45 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    Actually, for the wealthy it does.

    Trump has been very wealthy since birth. The wealthy do not have bank accounts like your average wageslave like me, where their salary gets deposited regularly and they earn interest and make withdrawls - and perhaps have an attached home loan account, etc. We earn interest in high income accounts or term deposits and then pay tax on that earning - like suckers.

    The wealthy use an entirely different model that focuses on using debt as its main tool.

    Their assets including real estate, share portfolios, stock options and even expensive artwork are 'good debt', they perhaps don't own them fully (they may be mortgaged, loan-backed or options, etc) but they're assets that continue to grow in value over the medium term. If they sell them or divest them for real cash it becomes income that they must pay tax on. The wealthy hate paying tax. Solution: use the assets as collateral for loans and credit lines. This is how Trump lives like a king while (previously) not having much liquid cash, and also how Elon and most ultrawealthg do it - their entire personal spending is on credit accounts - debt - and by writing as much of it off as businesses expenses (meals, travel, security, etc) it all becomes tax deductable as well.

    This is the same reason a lot of business executives request most of their payment packages as stock or options - it reduces their taxable income and builds their real wealth substantially. If they want a property: mortgage against their stock & option collateral. If they need money: bank credit line with their assets as collateral.

    So when banks say to a member of the 1% such as Trump "we cannot give you a loan account, your collateral/outstanding loans at other fiancial institutions/criminal associates/track record is too risky for us", that means he cannot use that bank and must look elsewhere. He is debanked by them for his purposes.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    They can use loans yes, but it's still not what debanking means.

    Btw executives get stock options because the board of directors think that gives them incentive to get the stock price up. And deferred taxes yes.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    You're being pedantic.

    There are multiple types of de-banking. One explicitly applie:

    "Debanking refers to the practice by financial institutions of declining or limiting financial services to businesses across whole sectors if they are assessed as having a higher money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF) risk."

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Billionaires are not the 1%... they're the 0.1% of the 1%...

    I hate that occupy wall street picked such a stupid number to pick fights with. 1% is like a high earning doctor. Well off, but not like wealthy enough to buy votes and sway elections...

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    Arguing semantics is kinda pointless when the message is that wealth needs to be distributed far better.

    Nobody at Occupy was protesting that just the billionaires need to be taxed much more and the ten-millionaires* should stay just as-is.

    *The top 1% in the USA have roughly $12 million USD net assets as of 2025. That is far more than they need to live a very comfortable life with many luxuries.

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