BALTIMORE - Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown condemned four of the world's largest credit card companies for pausing the implementation of a new merchant code for gun sales that he says would help prevent mass shootings and curb gun violence. He was joined by 13 other attorneys general, including Delaware's Kathy Jennings.
Visa, American Express, and MasterCard announced plans in September 2022 to add a merchant code for gun retailers, and Discover followed in February 2023. Merchant codes are a set of numbers that describe a merchant's primary business activities and that are used to track purchases and provide rewards points for qualified purchases. The creation of the new code was approved in fall of 2022 by the International Organization for Standardization to allow financial institutions to better detect and report activities related to the purchase of firearms and ammunition at standalone gun retail stores.
Brown said that all four companies announced last week that they were halting the implementation of the code, citing legislative bills in several states seeking to bar or limit the use of the voluntary code as an incursion on Second Amendment rights.
The attorneys general sent a letter to the CEOs of the four credit card companies on March 16, sharing their concern as applying merchant category codes is a routine action taken regularly and that, like other codes, the firearms-retailer code does nothing more than categorize according to the nature of the store.
"It is clear that your about-face is the result of a handful of state legislative proposals threatening penalties, and amorphous veiled threats from certain state attorneys general, if you code your transaction data as you have pledged to do," the letter said. It continued to encourage the credit card companies to follow through on their previous plan to code gun retailers, stating that the officials did not believe any state interest could justify a government prohibiting them from doing so and that they should not change their minds due to "threats of incipient legislation and nebulous repercussions."
"We fear you are setting a precedent that invites further threats and interference in lawful, protected business practices," the letter said.
Attorney General Brown said that enabling financial institutions to detect and flag threatening patterns and potential criminal activity enforcement is nothing new and has been going on for decades, like when banks are required to file suspicious activity reports after detecting a known or suspected violation of law or suspicious transactions.
The new code, if implemented, will have no bearing on an individual's ability to lawfully purchase firearms.