There's a bill for almost exactly that currently pending in committee: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401 If you like the idea, read the text on there and call your senators to support it.
There's a bill for almost exactly that currently pending in committee: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/401 If you like the idea, read the text on there and call your senators to support it.
The relevant part is section 5b.
>(b) Prohibition.—No payment card network, including a subsidiary of a payment card network, may, directly or through any agent, processor, or licensed member of the network, by contract, requirement, condition, penalty, or otherwise, prohibit or inhibit the ability of any person who is in compliance with the law, including section 8 of this Act, to obtain access to services or products of the payment card network because of political or reputational risk considerations.
Then the goalposts shift to: “This isn’t for reputational risk, it’s because we consider fraud more likely for this type of industry, and we are within our rights to take a proactive approach to fraud.” And there is no requirement that they disclose the reasons for that decision.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s progress. But it’s far from a panacea.
It would be a hard sell to finger Steam as being at high risk of fraud. Steam has a very generous refund policy, and if you don't consider it generous enough, and chargeback a purchase on your Steam account, they just lock it (and access to all your games) until you pay them.
I don't have insider information about how often Steam gets hit with fraud alleged chargebacks, but I can't imagine it's a significant percentage.
> Don’t get me wrong: it’s progress. But it’s far from a panacea.
Progress in this day and age is great. Progress right now is at least 2 orders of magnitude better than patiently waiting for a panacea.
> Steam has a very generous refund policy
It doesn't.
Can you provide counter examples? I've legitimately never had a refund refused within the terms they outlined.
For fraud related risk they should still be considered a common carriers but may adjust rates for certain types of transactions or businesses, if, in good faith and backed by empirical data, they can demonstrate the monetary risk to the card processor, and that the increased transaction costs are aligned with the level of risk and are not punitive or discriminatory.
The key point here is ”good faith”.
I don’t want to disadvantage their business or make them absorb fraud costs, but I want all excuses off the table.
OTOH Visa and MasterCard testified in front of Congress a couple of months ago that they have >50% profit margins which indicates to me that there is a regulatory failure in antitrust here.
i think that sounds like a perfectly fine compromise - choosing not to provide services that are an especially high risk of fraud should be within their rights.
it just means that they could be forced to defend those decisions in court, which is good and exactly the sort of thing that courts are supposed to decide.
Exactly. If they are misapplying their fraud criteria, companies start suing and winning and Mastercard stops misapplying their criteria.
This sounds great on paper, but what incentive does Valve have fighting for a game listing with only 100 players?
I get the feeling many companies would find it easier to allow payment processors to censor something if the product isn't earning them much anyway.
"That's one of our least popular items we sell so honestly we don't really care..."
Which is within the right for the reseller to decide, but it does nothing for protecting access to a product that's otherwise only available on a select few digital storefronts.
Then it becomes an issue for the game studio, who may not have the funding to fight a case to remain available. And then you have a situation where the game studio has become a victim of a payment processor's conspiracy theory that they're tied to fraud.
The section is not without its own flaws, mainly in 5(c):
> (c) Civil penalty.—Any payment card network that violates subsection (b) shall be assessed a civil penalty by the Comptroller of the Currency of not more than 10 percent of the value of the services or products described in that subsection, not to exceed $10,000 per violation.
I see 2 problems as it is currently written: (1) The penalty's too low, & (2) restricting dispense of the law to only the Comptroller renders it ineffective.
(1) is easily solvable with regards to editing the text alone: raise the limit to 50% & $100k respectively.
(2) is also solvable, by striking out "by the Comptroller of the Currency", or adding in ", or by a federal court, whichever penalty is higher, " at the end of that part.