Four companies that collectively control how most Americans buy and sell things received warning letters this week from FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, threatening enforcement action if they deny customers access to financial services based on political or religious beliefs. The targets are Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe.
As an example, we obtained a copy of the letter sent to Visa for you here.
The letters didn’t name a single specific violation, and they didn’t need to. The track record is already public. PayPal has frozen accounts of several political commentators.
Stripe cut off payment processing for President Trump’s campaign website after January 6, 2021. Both companies have spent years making unilateral decisions about who deserves access to the financial system, hiding behind vague terms of service that give compliance teams almost unlimited discretion.
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“Full participation in commerce and public life necessarily requires that law-abiding individuals can access, and freely participate in, our financial system,” Chairman Ferguson wrote.
“It is inconsistent with American values to deny law-abiding individuals the ability to run their legitimate businesses and feed their families because they attracted the ire of rogue American officials, overzealous activists, or, more worryingly, foreign governments seeking to control public discourse,” he continued.
“That is why President Trump’s August 7, 2025, Executive Order on debanking makes clear that it is unacceptable to debank law-abiding citizens due to ‘political affiliations, religious beliefs, or lawful business activities.’”
Ferguson’s letters lean on Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”
The logic is that if your terms promise equal access and you cut someone off for their politics, that’s deceptive. “As an American citizen, I abhor and condemn any efforts to debank or otherwise deny law-abiding consumers access,” Ferguson wrote, citing Trump’s August 2025 executive order on debanking.
He told Visa and Mastercard they’re responsible not just for their own conduct but for member banks on their networks. “Equally concerning is the conduct of payments providers and payment networks that turn a blind eye when their financial institution members debank consumers for these reasons,” he wrote.
PayPal declined to comment. Visa and Mastercard didn’t respond. Only Stripe pushed back: “At Stripe, we do not restrict access to our services based on political viewpoints or affiliation.”
Ferguson’s letters describe payment services as “essential for Americans’ participation in everyday commerce, and, directly or indirectly, for the exercise of core rights and freedoms.” It treats access to payment infrastructure not as a privilege companies can revoke at will, but as something closer to a necessity.
The real question is whether letters become action. The FTC opened no investigations and announced no penalties.
