Credit card companies are issuing orders to categorize gun shop sales separately to allow the tracking of firearms with Visa announcing its plans, similar to what Mastercard and American Express have previously announced.
Visa said that it would apply the International Organization for Standardization's new merchant code to gun shop sales. The new IOS code was announced on Friday and comes as before, gun store sales were labeled as "general merchandise."
Tracking Gun Sales Purchases
In a statement, the credit card company said, "Following ISO's decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules."
The announcement is viewed as a major victory for gun control advocates who argued that a separate category for gun store sales will help track suspicious quantities of firearm sales that could potentially lead to a mass shooting.
However, gun rights advocates and gun lobbyists have said that categorizing gun shop sales would be unfair to the industry given that the majority of firearm sales do not result in mass shootings, as per Fox Business.
The credit card company, which acts as a middleman between banks and merchants, is the largest payment network. Having three major payment processors all electing to label gun store sales, there is now massive pressure placed on banks and card issuers to decide if they will permit purchases categorized as gun shop sales on their issued cards.
Several New York officials and pension funds had pushed the ISO and banks to adopt the new code on gun shop sales. Two of the largest public pension funds in the United States, California and New York, pressured the country's largest credit card companies to adopt separate sales codes for gun sales.
According to CNN, on the other hand, American Express said that it will follow its usual business practices and work with third-party processors and partners to implement the new code. In a statement, the company said, "We are focused on ensuring that we have the right controls in place to meet our regulatory and fiduciary responsibility, as well as prevent illegal activity on our network."
Thorough Implementation
Mastercard released a statement on Saturday noting that recent bipartisan action in Congress is a positive step in "meaningfully" addressing gun violence in the country. With the ISO approving the new merchant category code, the company said it is turning its focus on how the system will be implemented by merchants and their banks.
The company added that they continue to support lawful purchases on their network while working to protect the privacy and decisions of individual cardholders. The statement added that this is exactly how they would manage the process for any other appropriate MCC, such as a bicycle shop or sporting goods store.
The president of Everytown for Gun Safety, John Feinblatt, welcomed ISO's decision, saying it was crucial now for it to be implemented thoroughly. He said, "Today's announcement is a critical first step towards giving banks and credit card companies the tools they need to recognize dangerous firearm purchasing trends," The Guardian reported.
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