Mastercard’s recent decision to prohibit the use of its debit cards at cannabis dispensaries highlights the challenges facing the legal marijuana industry. While the SAFE Banking Act would protect banks that work with cannabis businesses, it would not address the underlying issue of marijuana’s federal illegality which was Mastercard’s stated reason for the policy change. Advocates argue that comprehensive federal cannabis reform through decriminalization and legalization is ultimately needed to resolve these financial and banking issues plaguing the legal marijuana industry. Mastercard’s move demonstrates that piecemeal reforms are insufficient and that full federal decriminalization is the only sustainable solution.


I hope in my lifetime we will see federal decriminalization. Enough already!

    • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      All of the porn on pornhub now is from verified sources since they forced mindgeek to purge all of their unverified content (to keep them as payment processors)

      Nothing wrong with taking money from porn now that they strong armed pornhub into doing what it wanted

    • Taur10@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is also why Tumblr maintains it’s ban on porn, Visa and Mastercard exclusively process their own cards, and wield that as a weapon against what they don’t like.

  • Psythik@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    Man that title really had me excited. For I moment I thought MasterCard was going to do the opposite and embrace legal cannabis sales.

  • Hillock@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    Even federally legalizing cannabis could not be enough to solve the issue. International banking makes this complicated. Uruguay faces this issue, cannabis is already legalized but cash only because international banks would have to stop doing businesses with local banks otherwise. Germany is also facing this issue in it’s attempt to legalize cannabis.

    Now I would hope the USA is big enough of a market and has enough influence to simply change this. Especially since it’s the United States Federal Reserve’s who prohibits cannabis-related operations. International provisions on money laundering would still be an issue.

    But the risk is always that American banks fear losing access to certain international markets outweighs the potential earnings from dealing with cannabis operations. So again, even if they are allowed to deal with them, they might opt out of it.

    • MycoMadness@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      The SAFE banking act that was supposed to be voted on the senate floor this summer session would help transition into a free market for investment in cannabis. It’s been pushed till after the August recess, but apparently it has support on both sides (aside from amendments some politicians are trying to throw in).

      If passed it would allow banks and other investment opportunities to invest in cannabis businesses, which would likely motivate Mastercard to allow purchases.

  • HousePanther@lemmy.goblackcat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Who would’ve thought that MasterCard would be the unlikely ally. Well, more to the point, their greedy noses are smelling money. If it just happens to have a faint hint of ganja, so be it! Well, I guess MasterCard may be a friend here, in as much as a corporation really could be at any rate.

    • psudo@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      61
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think you misread the headline: “[MasterCard] announced this week that it has instructed U.S. financial institutions to stop allowing customers to use its debit cards to purchase marijuana products at cannabis stores…”

      • 001100 010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Honestly, our attention span is so fucked, most of us only read headlines.

        Source: Me, I read headlines most of the time. Too depressed to read a full article.

        • Aggy@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          I often stop at the headline because reading the whole article will make me depressed.

        • qprimed@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          thats how they win, fellow person of earth. don’t let them steal your joy and the power of information.

      • HumbleHobo@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m no journalist, but that headline is a bit of a mess, come on CommonDreams, gotta step up their headline game more.

  • bricklove@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    MasterCard is the worst. They required like 150 manual tests for an EMV certification and used their own shitty test report format and now this?!

  • millie@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Time to reboot the 90s Visa ads about businesses that don’t take American Express, except now it’s MasterCard.