alt Hacker NewsTargeting them with what?
What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral, essential piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2% off of every dollar of consumer spending?
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> Targeting them with what?
> What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral, essential piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2% off of every dollar of consumer spending?
The US courts.
Visa was specifically pulled into the lawsuit against PornHub; here's Visa's official statement on the matter: https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/compan...
The lawsuit is still ongoing.
Pressure campaigns could lead to laws regulating the card industry, self regulation prevents some of that (see movies and games ratings agencies, which avoid government ratings coming in and potentially connecting an 18+ rating with outright bans like we’ve seen in the UK and Australia in the past)
Because Visa's revenue is not dependent upon ideological neutrality.
They're half of a duopoly.
Threats of exposure and boycotting/blacklisting the card making room for competitors.
Plenty of religious groups have the money to be able to start the "holy card". And there's plenty of businesses that'd be giddy to accept Jesus card.
Consider, for example, companies like hobby lobby or Chick-fil-A banning visa and promoting Jesus card.
It also wouldn't take much for such a card to advertise itself as kid friendly.
Thinking about it, I'm a little surprised this hasn't happened already.
The leverage is that the activists will potentially be able to draw the ire of the government. Visa and MC get away with absolute murder in terms of the size of the fees that they charge in the US. Most developed countries don't allow that. The US government could easily regulate them (as they already do with debit card fees) or use anti-trust law against the obvious duopoly charging exorbitant prices. Because of this situation, Visa and MC have a very strong incentive to crack down on things the government doesn't like.
The unspoken arrangement is that the government allows them to keep charging a de facto sales tax on a massive portion of the economy as long as they cooperate and de facto ban things that the government wants banned but can't ban themselves due to that pesky constitution.