Credit Card Issuer Set to Track Gun Sales Starting in April

In a blatant 2nd amendment violation, Discover is set to start tracking gun purchases in April.

Although Discover isn’t the first credit card issuer to announce they’re tracking gun sales, they’ll be the first to implement the policy.

Visa, Mastercard, and American Express previously announced they would flag gun sales.

Discover joins Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx to announce they will track gun purchases made by their cardholders.

Discover will begin tracking gun sales in April.

— DailyNoah.com (@DailyNoahNews) March 2, 2023

BREAKING: Visa, MasterCard, Amex to Start Flagging All Sales from Gun Shops Nationwide https://t.co/UrLwZhsHaP pic.twitter.com/6VhsUYL1bR

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 13, 2022

The plan to separately categorize sales at gun shops is WORSE than a federal registry. Visa WARNED that it asks payment networks to decide "which legal goods can or cannot be purchased." So who pressured Visa/Mastercard/AmEx to go along with it? Govt? Banks? Or both? pic.twitter.com/6llOaMfxD7

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) September 12, 2022

From AP:

Payment processor Visa Inc. said Saturday that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops, a major win for gun control advocates who say it will help better track suspicious surges of gun sales that could be a prelude to a mass shooting.

But the decision by Visa, the world’s largest payment processor, will likely provoke the ire of gun rights advocates and gun lobbyists, who have argued that categorizing gun sales would unfairly flag an industry when most sales do not lead to mass shootings. It joins Mastercard and American Express, which also said they plan to move forward with categorizing gun shop sales.

Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”

“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,” the payment processor said in a statement.

The Independent Journal Review noted that 57 million Discover credit card users would be impacted by this policy move.

Last year, the International Organization for Standardization, an international body, announced that it was creating a new merchant category code for gun shop sales. Such stores had formerly been classified as dealers in “general merchandise,” according to Fox Business.

As noted by CNBC, the code will show where a purchase was made and the amount, but not what was bought.

As noted by the website UpgradedPoints, there are 57 million Discover credit cards in existence.

I've had discover card since 1984 …. time to cancel it.

57 Million+ Users Impacted as Financial Company Becomes First to Track Gun Purchases

READ: https://t.co/mU457v3qX8

— JP Taylor (@JPTaylo61946545) March 2, 2023

“We remain focused on continuing to protect and support lawful purchases on our network while protecting the privacy of cardholders,” Discover told Reuters.

Via Reuters:

A Discover spokesperson said following the publication of the story that other payment network companies had already decided to implement the new code in April, and that Discover was following their lead. The Discover spokesperson declined to name those peers.

“We were following the industry for consistent implementation,” the spokesperson said.

Representatives for Discover’s major peers — Visa Inc, Mastercard Inc and American Express Co — declined to comment to Reuters on what their schedules for introducing the new code are. Last fall, the companies said they would work to implement the code while respecting privacy rights.

A representative for Geneva-based ISO said the new code, dubbed “5723 – Gun and ammunition shops” – will be available for financial institutions to use by the end of February.

“The decision to use the new merchant category code is eventually left up to the users in the industry,” the ISO representative said.