(New York) Visa is suspending its decision to begin categorizing purchases at gun stores, a significant victory for conservative groups and Second Amendment supporters who believed tracking purchases would indirectly discriminate against purchases gun legal.
This decision is, at the same time, a defeat for gun control groups. They hoped that categorizing credit and debit card purchases would allow authorities to potentially see red flags — such as large ammunition purchases — before a mass shooting occurs.
Bloomberg News reported Thursday that Mastercard was also suspending its plans, but a company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When Visa and Mastercard announced plans to implement a separate merchant category code for gun shop purchases, the payment networks were heavily criticized by the gun lobby as well as conservative politicians. A group of Republican state attorneys general have written a letter to payment networks threatening them with legal action against Visa and Mastercard if they go through with their plan.
In a statement, Visa said this legal threat was part of the reason the company suspended the implementation.
“There is now significant confusion and legal uncertainty in the payments ecosystem,” it says.
Visa and Mastercard’s plan would not have tracked individual gun purchases. Instead, it would have broken down gun store purchases into a separate category. But not every major purchase at an armory would have been considered a red flag.
For example, the purchase of a gun safe, which costs several thousand dollars, would have been considered a major purchase at a gun store, even though the safe is considered a responsible tool for gun ownership. firearms and unrelated to possible mass shootings.