(DCWatchdog.com) – The biggest credit card companies – Visa, Mastercard, and American Express – have announced that they are moving to track firearm stores’ transactions through a new code for their sales.
In what has been described as a major victory for gun control advocates, the three payments giants will use a new merchant code from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), allowing it to identify firearm sales at gun stores.
The soon-to-be-introduced measure, though, does exclude the purchases of firearms at big-box retailers.
The new pro-gun control policy of the major US credit card companies became possible after, on Friday, the ISO approved the establishment of the new merchant code for gun retailers.
A report by Newsmax points out that this has become possible due to “pressure from gun control activists” who insist that it would enable the tracking of “suspicious weapons purchases.”
On Saturday, Visa Inc., the world’s largest payments processor, announced that it would implement the new category code for gun stores in the United States.
“Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” Visa declared in its statement.
Mastercard Inc. sent a message to that end on Friday, shortly after the ISO’s approval of the new code.
“We now turn our focus to how it will be implemented by merchants and their banks as we continue to support lawful purchases on our network while protecting the privacy and decisions of individual cardholders,” Mastercard said.
American Express Co had also made it clear earlier that as soon as the ISO develops the new merchant code, it will implement it in its transactions and will work with third-party partners and processors to get that working.
The code in question will show where a person makes purchases, though not the actual items that person bought.
The new policy of the credit card companies comes after several major US pension funds submitted shareholder resolutions asking them to consider the issue. These include pension funds for government workers in California and New York.
The report notes that Second Amendment defenders are worried that the new ISO code for US gun stores will facilitate “unauthorized surveillance” on gun owners.
The measure on the part of the payments companies comes after President Joe Biden called on the US Congress to ban what the mainstream media and gun control advocates call “assault weapons.”
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Visa, the world's largest payments processor, said on Saturday it will implement a new merchant category code for U.S. gun retailers, which will identify transactions at firearms stores.https://t.co/uyBwr9mPyc
— Newsmax (@newsmax) September 11, 2022
