Visa, MasterCard, PayPal Under Pressure To Halt Extremist Funding

By William Suberg

An action group pressuring payment entities to block funds destined for white supremacists has successfully lobbied PayPal and is going after Visa and MasterCard.

SumOfUs, which describes itself as a “corporate watchdog organization,” this week launched a petition campaign to bring attention to the practice.

“This week, over 70,000 members of SumOfUs stood up against corporate greed to stop PayPal and French and Austrian Banks from helping a violent white supremacist group in Europe use their service to raise money to sabotage rescue boats saving refugees in the Mediterranean—and won,” Senior Campaign Manager Eoin Dubsky said in a press release yesterday.

Illicit activity financing has been an increasing focus of European Union policy recently.

Partnerships aimed at how terrorist networks finance themselves, in particular, have launched with the support of lawmakers and crime agencies such as INTERPOL.

Cryptocurrency has frequently surfaced as an area of concern, despite widely varying views as to how significant a role it plays versus cash and other payment methods.

By contrast, the actions of the French Generation Identitaire group appeared to have had little impact as over £50,000 came to its cause via legitimate payment channels.

“When these companies profit from donations made to hate groups, they are taking blood money—plain and simple,” Dubsky added.

“As long as these companies turn a blind eye to domestic terror just to make a quick buck, they are complicit in the violence unleashed in our communities.”