A credit card industry group has approved a plan to track sales of guns and ammo with a new merchant code – By John Sexton (Hot Air) / Sept 9, 2022
CBS News has a big scoop this afternoon. The industry group that sets international standards for credit card companies has decided to create a new code for the purchase of guns and ammo that, while not identifying the exact purchases, will separate those items from the more generic category they had been lumped in with previously.
Merchant category codes are made up of four digits and are used across all sorts of industries as a means to classify retailers, while not revealing individual product purchases. Credit card companies currently lump firearm retailers in with other outlets, classifying them as either “5999: Miscellaneous retail stores” or “5941: Sporting Goods Stores.”
With a new code for firearms merchants, potentially suspicious purchasing patterns could be flagged to law enforcement — much the same way banks and credit unions made more than 1.4 million suspicious activity reports in 2021 for other types of transactions that might suggest anything from identity theft to terrorist financing.
This is part of a plan being pushed by congressional Democrats after Amalgamated Bank of New York, a progressive bank that often involves itself in social issues, made repeated attempts to push for the new code, all of which were denied.
