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PayPal, Square and big banking's war on the sex industry
For nearly a decade, PayPal, JPMorgan Chase, Visa/MasterCard, and now Square, have systematically denied or closed accounts of small businesses, artists and independent contractors whose business happens to be about sex. These payment processing authorities have also coerced websites to cease featuring sexual content under threat of service withdrawal, all while blaming ambiguous rules or pressure from one another.Monday a federal appeals court ruled that pressuring credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard to stop doing business with speech-protected websites violates their First Amendment rights. Specifically ones that feature content from sex workers. And in June, the FDIC clarified that it's against the rules for businesses like PayPal, Chase and Square to refuse business or close accounts based on "high risk" assessments related to human sexuality. But it may not be enough to stop what's become an entrenched pattern of systematic discrimination by payment processors -- one that disproportionately denies financial opportunities for women.
