Visa, Mastercard Abandon Plans to Track Gun Purchases

Visa and Mastercard have decided to stop plans to use a new merchant code to track gun purchases.

According to WAFB, Visa and Mastercard’s change of plans is “a significant win for conservative groups and Second Amendment advocates who felt that tracking gun shop purchases would inadvertently discriminate against legal firearm purchases.”

Riley Moore, West Virginia’s State Treasurer, reacted to the news by tweeting:

Visa and Mastercard dropped their plans to track firearm and ammunition purchases because of my legislation.

When conservatives fight, we win. pic.twitter.com/m1rOfJSoVU

— Riley Moore (@RileyMooreWV) March 9, 2023

According to Breitbart News, Discover Card plans to start monitoring purchases of firearms and ammo in April.

Discover Financial Services was ahead of Visa and Mastercard in February 2023, according to Reuters, who also noted that Discover would “allow its network to track purchases at gun retailers come April, making it the first among its peers to publicly give a date for moving ahead with the initiative, which is aimed at helping authorities probe gun-related crimes.”

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted the code for tracking gun purchases in September 2022, and an ISO spokesman stated, “The decision to use the new merchant category code is eventually left up to the users in the industry.”

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