Visa and Mastercard stopped plans to use a new merchant number to track gun sales.
WAFB reported that Visa’s and Mastercards’ pivot was “a significant victory for conservative groups, Second Amendment advocates, and Second Amendment supporters who felt that tracking gun shop purchase would inadvertently discriminate towards legal firearm purchases.”
Breitbart News reports that Discover Card plans will begin tracking ammunition and guns purchased in April.
Reuters noted that Discover Financial Services had outperformed Visa and Mastercard in February 2023. Discover said that its network would be able to track gun purchases starting April. This makes it the first peer to give a public date for the initiative which is aimed to help authorities investigate gun-related crimes.
In September 2022, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), approved the code for tracking gun purchase. A representative of ISO stated that “The industry will ultimately decide whether to use the new merchant code.”