Mastercard moves to ban cannabis purchases on its debit cards

Payment providers should not be able to control what users are or are not allowed to purchase with their cards. It's a downward spiral. Electronic payment is a necessity in nowadays life.

As long as it's a legal transaction, the providers should STFU.
- In many states, and federally, marijuana sales aren't legal transactions, and that's the point. I don't think Mastercard is necessarily doing anything wrong here, they're just covering their asses. This one is on our politicians who are still dragging their heels on legalizing marijuana.

Payment processors have a functional monopoly and should not be permitted to refuse or otherwise be punitive to any category of purchase.

This is lame. Mastercard telling people what not to by is outrageous but not the first time they've done this.

What else have they done? I had no idea this was even legal.
- they did it with pornhub at least

These aren't credit cards, but debit cards. It's access to money you have already earned, is in the bank, you own, and Mastercard is saying you can't spend it on a particular thing. You get around this by doing an ATM cash withdrawal, but it's still an extra step, and it's still a megacorp restricting your access to something that the law does not.
- And you’ll have to pay the atm fee as a punishment for using cash
- Bold move to assume they'll take cash. Many places gave up on cash during the pandemic and many of those haven't gone back to taking cash.
  I used to hate the "convince" fee companies charged for using a credit card, but when it's reframed as a cash discount, it's not as aggravating.
  That said, plenty of places are electronic payment only these days. Scary times, given the payment processor monopoly and their ability to determine what you can and can't buy.
- Usually (in my experience) the weed store just has an ATM in it, or the POS system is technically an ATM
- It's access to money you have already earned, is in the bank, you own, and Mastercard is saying you can’t spend it on a particular thing.
  Strictly speaking, they're saying that they won't facilitate the transaction themselves, presumably because they're concerned about legal exposure from processing transactions for goods that are illegal under federal law. State law may not be restricting your access, but federal still is, at least on paper, even if it's largely de facto unenforced.
  Mastercard makes money every time you swipe a card. They're not going to cut off their own income unless they think the cost of not doing doing so is higher, such as legal exposure.
  I agree that I don't love how much control a few private companies have over the financial system, but at least with this case, I think the real issue is Congress for not getting around to legalizing Marijuana.

Well, they can't stop a cash withdrawal on your card to pay for it. So, it appears they still have to pay for it in a way.

Cannabis users should move to ban Mastercard.

From the article: "The federal government considers cannabis sales illegal, so these purchases are not allowed on our systems," the spokesperson added.

Seems like this isn’t a Mastercard thing, but a government thing. Marijuana is still illegal at the inter-state level unfortunately.

This is exactly it, and everyone crowing about "credit card companies shouldn't be able to restrict what you can buy" didn't read the article. Mastercard doesn't want to restrict people from buying things they are legally allowed to buy, because more Mastercard transactions = more money for them. But they have to follow the laws, and being complicit in illegal purchases puts them at risk for litigation.
No point in getting mad at Mastercard for this. Get angry at our politicians who still haven't legalized marijuana. If marijuana is legalized federally, and sales of marijuana are legalized federally, I guarantee you MC will lift this ban in a heartbeat so they can get a piece of that pie. Cannabis is a cash cow.
that hasnt been being enforced for a long time, so if something's changed it'd help Mastercard's PR quite a bit to point to a government order or something.
Otherwise yeah it's a mastercard thing
- It's still a non-trivial legal liability that any major company would prefer to not have.
  If you could spend $1 to eliminate a 1% chance that you're going to be arrested, you're probably gonna take it.

That's a very dumb business move, it might be illegal for then to do that in Canada

It should be illegal for a company to limit what you can purchase anywhere in the world.
- Under the law, they literally have to limit transactions for illegal goods, otherwise they become complicit in that crime.
  The real stupidity is that Marijuana is still illegal under federal law.
There's nothing illegal about them blocking illegal purchases on their cards, of which the US federal government still considera marijuana illegal
- Re read my comment
I only skimmed the article but it seemed US centric so I'd guess this is relevant to the US since it's not legal federally there. I was worried for a moment since I use one for my orders in Canada. Though if for some reason does happen in Canada I'm sure there'll still be some way to do online orders like with Interac or another company. Too much tax money collected for the Canadian government to just let an online revenue stream dry up from a credit lender.

This was a maneuver by VISA and MC in the Aughts when Wikileaks was publishing information embarrassing to the US Federal Government.

Pharmacies and medical doctors have long been creative about preserving privacy. Dispensaries will go back to selling tea or candy or miscellaneous OTC pharmacological product which they've been doing since prohibition if not before.

Bitcoin looks better everyday.

bitcoin looks worse every day, however there are some potentially useful crypto currencies that do continue to hold some appeal

You'll not stop me! I'll just withdraw money from an ATM, and what I do with that is nacho business.

And over here in Sweden we're 99% cash-less at the moment. I tried to warn as many as possible that we do not want to give up transactional independence.

Widespread cryptocurrency adoption will set us free.

https://nano.org/

No. Aside from the fact that cryptocurrencies are just Ponzi schemes and you'd have to be a fool to continue falling for them, using crypto instead of traditional currencies isn't going to make illegal transactions any less illegal, which is the whole reason Mastercard banned the transactions to begin with.
- Ponzi schemes
  Surely there's a Rule of Acquisition encouraging this, Rom.
- Touche. 🙂 Altough I don't agree on the Ponzi part, well maybe partially.
The solution to "I can't use my credit card to buy weed" is not "guess I'll join a cult."
- That sounds like a very cool concept for a music video.

We’re about to get this with FedNow. It’s 4 cents rather than 0.5, but it’s better than debit card fees

Ok, I’ll just switch, they already ban porn purchases 👍

I buy all my weed from “my guy.” 10x better product for half the price. And at least I know the person I’m dealing with is one making a living instead of some weed bro millionaire fuckboi who’s dad helped him start his weed venture.

I didn't even think you were allowed to use debit cards or credit cards to buy weed.

Use my debit card every time here in NY.
I use mine all the time to buy weed, but I'm in Canada, it's legal here.
- In washington state it is only cash. Banks will not bank with weed sellers.

How about visa?