Authorize.net suspends use by firearms retailers

DarkLight · Sep 25, 2013

Just got this alert last night. I will SO be sending the letter and calling today...

Grass Roots North Carolina - GRNC Alert 9-24-13 AUTHORIZE .NET "DE-AUTHORIZES" GUN SELLERS

GRNC has just learned that the shopping-cart-gateway provider, Authorize.Net (a subsidiary of CyberSource), is refusing to continue providing services to Hyatt Guns, a large North Carolina-based gun shop that also has a sizable online presence.
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You read that right. Authorize.Net is terminating the gun store’s access to its services simply because they sell guns. Based on their policy statement above, one can only conclude that this discriminatory policy is being applied to gun sellers nationwide. It looks like the small but noisy anti-gun crowd has gotten to what must be a jelly-spined PR department at CyberSource and Authorize.Net. Either that, or leadership at these companies have simply become anti-gun all on their own. Whatever the cause, Authorize.Net is making it clear that businesses lawfully selling firearms are undesirable, and need not apply.
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GRNC is recommending that you keep a close eye out for the Authorize.Net and CyberSource names and logos when shopping online, and avoid making purchases from companies that use their services. When you run across one of these logos, take a moment and let the online shop know why you’ve decided to take your business elsewhere. Below you’ll see the identifying logos for CyberSource and Authorize.Net, which you may see when checking out at an online store. Please take a good look, and put them on your “don’t buy” list.
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Here are the logos to look for:

I hope that Amazon doesn't use them but if they do...oh well.

BTPost · Sep 25, 2013

AMAZON is big enough to do their own CC Processing, In-House, and keep the fees for themselves....

Yard Dart · Sep 25, 2013

Guess I will have to jack up their price for electrical services we perform in their office. Wonder what the weanies would think of their vendors carrying weapons on premise, as I have done many a time....

Yard Dart · Jan 26, 2015

Related article:
Take that, jerks: McMillan Merchant Solutions, PistolPay offer pro-gun alternatives to anti-gun banks and payment companies

We all enjoy talking about guns, but the fact of the matter is that if dealers, distributors, and manufacturers don’t get paid, we don’t have a gun industry.
It appears that this was precisely the plot of a number of anti-gun financial companies (that just happen to donate millions to anti-gun Democrats) that started several years ago during the first term of “hope and change.”
The April 2012 showdown between anti-gun Bank of America (BOA) and Kelly McMillan of McMillan USA that resulted from this behind-the-scenes battle quickly became legendary.
He spent 5 minutes talking about how McMillan has changed in the last 5 years and has become more of a firearms manufacturer than a supplier of accessories.
At this point I interrupted him and asked, “Can I possible save you some time so that you don’t waste your breath? What you are going to tell me is that because we are in the firearms manufacturing business you no longer want my business.”
“That is correct,” he said.
I replied, “That is okay, we will move our accounts as soon as possible. We can find a 2nd Amendment-friendly bank that will be glad to have our business. You won’t mind if I tell the NRA, SCI, and everyone one I know that BofA is not firearms industry friendly?”
“You have to do what you must,” he said.
“So you are telling me this is a politically motivated decision, is that right?”
Mr Fox confirmed that it was. At which point I told him that the meeting was over and there was nothing let for him to say.
There was, however, plenty for the shooting community to say, especially Kelly McMillan.
When Bearing Arms spoke with Kelly McMillan last week he said that he still fields emails and phone calls every day about the BOA snub, more than a year and a half later, from other gun industry companies that have been similarly targeted.
The sad fact of the matter is that BOA and other financial services merchants such as Intuit and PayPal have treated other firearms industry companies and customers just as poorly.
The difference between Kelly McMillan and most others that these anti-gun companies have discriminated against is that Kelly McMillan had the means and the determination to do something about it.
That “something” is the just-launched McMillan Merchant Solutions (MMS) a company established with Merchant Services Limited, which now offers credit card processing services to gun companies from a company that will never turn them down for political reasons.

“Yeah, but what does that mean to me?”
Whether you buy online or in the store, roughly 90-percent of sales are conducted with credit or debit cards. By refusing to do business with gun companies, anti-gun banks and processing services were attempting to gut the firearms industry from underneath, making it difficult, if not impossible, for gun dealers to process sales. MMS is coming in to partner with dealers as their credit card processor to key both gun stores and their customers happy.
A third-generation firearms industry figurehead, Kelly McMillan is adamant that McMillian Merchant Solutions is designed first and foremost to give back to and support the gun industry by giving it a sound financial footing, and he’s showing that in unique way. A small percentage of every dollar of revenue that MMS goes to gun rights and conservation groups in order to keep up the fight to defend our Second Amendment rights, and the dealers that use MMS get to pick which one of these organizations that their processing fees supports.
MMS is great for full-time gun shops, but smaller FFLs and accessory makers might not need their kind of service, and they aren’t set up to handle the customer side of transactions the way Paypal is. Paypal is actively shutting down payments for firearms-related transactions, but there is an alternative that is starting to gain traction.
PistolPay is a PayPal replacement made for shooters, by shooters. Ira Goodstadt is a retired firefighter, avid 1911 junkie, home AR-15 builder, and online forum dweller who was attempting to use PayPal to process a forum group-buy from AIM Surplus, when Paypal locked down his account, then his wife’s account, and then finally his daughter’s, because they didn’t approve of what he was attempting to buy.
Tired of being treated as a second-class citizen just for exercising his constitutional rights, Ira and Chapman Ducote, a trigger-pulling friend with financial services background, went to work, and soon afterward PistolPay was born.
The first few months of PistolPay’s existence was slow, due in part to the meltdown of GPal/GunPal, which is either described as being Ponzi scheme or simply incompetent, depending on who you talk to. The GPal/GunPal meltdown made many in the firearms community leery of dealing with a new brand, fearing a scam.
Unlike GPal however, PistolPay operates though a major bank as the depository and Merchant Services Limited handles the card processing (as they do for McMillan Merchant Solutions). After partnering to handle the financial ends of raffles for a number of pro-gun groups ( including the 1911 Addicts forum and One Million Moms Against Gun Control), PistolPay started to gain momentum mostly by word of mouth, and is starting to build relationships within companies within the industry.
You might soon start to see PistolPay appear as a payment option on prominent industry web sites as a payment option.
Financial companies aligned with anti-gun Democrats are trying to hamper or shutdown the firearms industry. Thanks to companies like McMillan Merchant Solutions and PistolPay, their desire to infringe on our Constitutional rights just go that much harder.
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Yard Dart · Sep 27, 2013

An update to the story:

A subsidiary of Visa, a key Obama campaign donor, that specializes in credit card transactions has abruptly stopped servicing the nation’s largest gun store after four years because the store sells guns, a fact the owners never hid.
Hyatt Gun Shop of Charlotte, N.C., told Secrets that the subsidiary, Authorize.net/CyberSource, simply sent an email to owner Larry Hyatt to announce that it was suddenly breaking off the business relationship. The reason: “The sale of firearms or any similar product.”
The company email said that gun sales violated a section of the service agreement the two signed over four years ago and after Hyatt went into detail about its sales and products -- and name.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Justin Anderson, Hyatt’s marketing director. He said it took a week and thousands of dollars to line up a “gun friendly” credit card processor for online sales.

The brushoff of Hyatt's business has sparked a national boycott effort against Authorize.net and parent company CyberSource organized by the website Grass Roots North Carolina. “It looks like the small but noisy anti-gun crowd has gotten to what must be a jelly-spined PR department at CyberSource and Authorize.Net. Either that, or leadership at these companies have simply become anti-gun all on their own,” said the website in announcing the boycott.
Anderson suspects that the company, purchased by Visa in 2010, got cold feet dealing with a leading gun seller and he said that he's heard of other gun stores being dropped. The company had no immediate comment.
The sudden move comes just two weeks after the Washington Navy Yard shootings which were followed by a plea for more gun control from President Obama.
Several Visa executives contributed to the president’s re-election campaign. Their total was $21,780, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Below is the short email notice from Authorize.net:
Dear Hyatt Gun Shop Inc,

Authorize.Net LLC ("Authorize.Net") has determined that the nature of your business constitutes a violation of Section 2.xiv of the Authorize.Net Acceptable Use Guidelines and Sections 3.3 and 11.3 of the Authorize.Net Service Agreement (the "Agreement"). These sections include, but are not limited to, the sale of firearms or any similar product. Accordingly, pursuant to Section 4 of the Acceptable Use Guidelines, your ability to access and use the Authorize.Net Services will be terminated on September 30, 2013.
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Credit card firm cuts off nation's No. 1 gun store --- for selling guns | WashingtonExaminer.com

DarkLight · Sep 27, 2013

Nice YD, thanks for the additional link. I'm glad to see it making news outside of NC.

Witch Doctor 01 · Sep 27, 2013

I wonder if Visa will stop folks from using their card to purchase ammo and firearms?...

DarkLight · Sep 27, 2013

"VISA...apparently it's not everywhere you want to be..."

DarkLight · Sep 27, 2013

1000 rounds of .223 - $600
1000 rounds of .45 - $400
1000 rounds of 9mm - $300
...
Being able to pay for it with CASH (screw credit cards)...PRICELESS!

...

*Editorial note*
Yes, I know that many debit cards are still either VISA or MasterCard and that when buying online they want something other than paper FRNs...

Byte · Oct 1, 2013

"...for everything else there's VISA MasterCard."

False advertising? I smell class action! Open to every prospective gun buyer that planned on buying a gun with their VISA card. I know I was planning on it...someday. We could settle out of court for say 1000 rounds of .308 or 5.56 each?

Byte

Scratch that...that's MasterCards slogan! Will just have to wait 'till they jump on the bandwagon I guess. Oops! DarkLight had the VISA slogan right.

kellory · Oct 1, 2013

Make mine 12ga buck-n-ball .22lr, and Dragon's breath. With a few cases of aerial parachute flares thrown in. (Star shot?)

BTPost · Oct 1, 2013

Sent off an eMail to VISA, stating that I would be CANCELING, or Transferring ALL my VISA Accounts to MasterCard Accounts, and EXACTLY WHY, I have taken this action. I got a Reply from them, AFTER they checked the Included Account Numbers and amount of Business done, with them, that they were "Sorry to lose my business" but that this was NOT a VISA Policy, but one of their FrontEnd Processors, and they list a bunch of their other FrontEnd Processors that still do business with the Firearms Industry. I Replied, that after 5 Decades with them, I had "No Interest in ANY further Business Dealings with an Outfit, such as they have demonstrated themselves to be." We will see what they come back with, after that Reply. ..... YMMV....

VHestin · Oct 3, 2013

Translation: We're just the parent company. We of course have NO control of the baby companies that couldn't survive 2hours without our support, honest!

DarkLight · Oct 3, 2013

Not only that, but they flat LIED to you.
From Wikipedia (verifying other sources now):

In November 2007 Cybersource purchased Authorize.Net for $565 million.[1] Authorize.Net was originally purchased in 2004 by Lightbridge for $82 Million.[2] In 2011, Authorize.net's parent company, CyberSource, was acquired by Visa.
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VISA owns Authorize.net via CyberSource.

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Authorize.net suspends use by firearms retailers

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