Visa, Mastercard, and American Express are preparing to make a new merchant code for firearm stores to comply with a California law that allows banks to track suspicious gun purchases, according to CBS News.
Executives from the three payment networks individually wrote to congressional Democrats in January, stating that the code will be available to retailers in California by 2025, the network reported.
Robert B. Thomson III, senior vice president at Visa, said there is “a tremendous amount of regulatory and legislative uncertainty” surrounding the gun merchant code but that Visa will seek to comply with California’s rules.
“Given the conflicting state laws on this topic and the likelihood that other states will enact legislation to either restrict or mandate the code, our implementation pause remains in effect,” he wrote.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the companies for comment following the report.
The International Organization for Standardization approved the new merchant category code (MCC) in September 2022 to help detect allegedly suspicious firearms and ammunition sales.
Visa, Mastercard, and American Express initially agreed to implement a sales code for gun merchants but later announced a pause, citing pushback in various U.S. states over concerns about improper tracking of consumer behavior.
The code, aimed at identifying firearms sellers, would identify the type of store where consumers shopped, though not the individual items they bought. Gun rights groups said that it would represent a serious breach of privacy and also potentially lead to infringements on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
In December 2023, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and 48 other Democrat lawmakers sent letters to payments companies urging them to resume work on implementing a sales code for gun merchants.
“We request that you resume this work and quickly implement the new firearm retailer MCC,” they stated, adding that the financial industry is “uniquely positioned to identify suspicious transactions” that could help prevent another mass shooting.
“Credit cards often facilitate the purchase of the weapons used to commit this violence: in multiple high-profile mass shootings over the past decade, shooters bought tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of firearms and ammunition by financing their purchases with credit cards—including in cases where the shooter could not have otherwise afforded the firearms,” they stated.
