Credit Card Processors to use newly created Gun Store Transaction Code

[powerboatr]

Wish I knew more, but I use ApplePay on my phone which hides my credit card number from the vendor. Does the code show up in my monthly statement? I'm not sure what to look for. Cash is good... until that's eliminated which seems to be another "c" theory to follow.

my visa statement currently just shows vendor. I.E. bissel or brookshires fuel, magpul,,

[bbhack]

From the article:

Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”

Seems like it applies per transaction not per retailer. So, if you go to Academy to buy lures, it would show a different code than if you were to buy a pistol. I don't know.

[Papa_Tiger]

From the article:

Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”

Seems like it applies per transaction not per retailer. So, if you go to Academy to buy lures, it would show a different code than if you were to buy a pistol. I don't know.

Possibly. My Visa CC shows some very strange categories. My wife's last single item purchase at Tractor Supply showed up as "Automotive". Not sure how cat food counts as "Automotive".

[rtschl]

NRA-ILA has released a statment:

Not in the article, just my 2 cents worth: This appears to be a redo of Operation Choke Point introduced by the Obama Administration. But instead of having the FDIC do it, which was clearly illegal, they get corporations to do it.

The inevitable goal of such a campaign is to convince banks and payment processors to stop dealing with the firearm industry entirely by claiming that it is “too risky” of an industry to be involved with.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/2022091 ... n-registry

[rtschl]

I have another question... Will this be used to deny merchants credit? What good is it even if we can pay cash (for now), but the merchant cannot order from manufacturers?

I hope the gun industry is looking at some kind of class action Tortious Interference claim.

Here is another interesting take at Daily Caller:

A newly approved code intended to track purchases at firearms stores could lead to a situation akin to “privatized government surveillance” of Americans, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/09/13/iso- ... perts-say/

[NotRPB]

MY local true value / Ace hardware store sells ammo ...as well as plumbing pipes that resemble 12 ga barrels... and wood and pipe clamps and electrical tape both in brown for hunting and black for assault type plumbing 12 ga pipes but yep
I'll use Discover too, or PayPal etc

[Rafe]

Just to chime in again--as someone who volunteered for 6 years as one of the U.S representatives for one specific ISO standard--this is not something that just came up, it isn't something that affects the U.S. only, and it wasn't voted into being by D.C. or the credit card networks.

Depending on the ISO standard in question, there might be scores of countries represented on the committees that ultimately decide on the published revisions to the global standard. The standard here is ISO 18245:2003, the 2003 being the last date a revision was published. BTW, adding or removing merchant codes most likely won't reach the level of being a new revision, so it will likely stay ISO 18245:2003 after these alterations.

There is a "nomination" process for all the ISO standards by which revisions are recommended to the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva. The addition of these new firearm-related codes may well have come from the U.S.; I have no way of knowing. But the countries sitting on the committees for any given ISO standard get one vote each. That is specifically so that no one country controls the voting. I was one of five people on our U.S. team on the committee, and the team as a whole got one vote. For our specific standard (which I won't mention), our biggest concern at the time was China...not because they had more voting power, but because they were flooding the standard with new revision requests.

Neither Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, nor the CEO of VISA can directly request a revision. Those go through the teams on the committee, individual volunteers who have bona fides about understanding and experience with that specific standard; they're the ones who publish a revision request. I can't speak for the procedure as it exists today, but less than a decade ago those revision requests would be circulated to the teams of the other participating countries. Each country team who chose to do so would respond with an analysis, their possible changes in wording or actual material aspects of the requested revision, and those analyses submitted to, and combined into a single document by, the ISO oversight committee dealing with that particular standard. Most of those oversight committees had multiple, related standards that they oversaw.

Net message here is that, for the types of revision requests I was involved in dealing with--and they could be as simple as rewording a single paragraph--it would always be a several-month to even a year process to bring the revision to a vote; voting occurred only once per calendar quarter. My guess is that whichever country's team submitted the new coding, the request probably started in the process last May or earlier.

Further, the individual volunteer representatives active on a country's team at any given time remained anonymous. Or names were never posted or used except internally within the ISO communications. Now, that doesn't mean somebody leaked, or somebody got influence over a team member...but I had to wait until I was no longer participating before I could put specifics about it on my resume.

I simply can't see this being a big enough deal for even George Soros to want to spend money to try to influence it. Reason being I doubt it affects many merchants in most countries--where firearms transactions are already highly regulated and thoroughly documented--and that I doubt the teams representing most countries even bothered to respond with their analysis of the request; didn't even blink an eye. In fact, it surprises me that this hadn't been done years ago. If the request came from the UK, for example, the U.S. representation couldn't derail it without convincing a majority of the countries represented to vote "no." Probably no way that was gonna happen even if we had Charles Cotton, Wayne LaPierre, and Ted Nugent representing the U.S. if it was one country out of, say, 50 casting a vote.

Now... With the caveat that I have no expertise in this particular ISO standard, my take is that all the credit card networks will adopt the full merchant code listing as published in ISO 18245, that means every network from JCB in Japan to VISA, MasterCard, AMEX, and Discover in the U.S. It's an auditable, global standard. They will have to be able to accept and transmit transaction data no matter where it originates or where it terminates.

That said, a little Google-fu indicates to me that it's the individual merchant financial institution that sets which subset of the Merchant Category Codes (MCC) that it uses. It isn't about the financial institution--or card servicing network--that issued you your credit card. The card issuer is going to pass along on your statement the MCC as obtained through the card network, the MCC that originates from the merchant bank through which the seller processes credit/debit card transactions.

For example, here are category codes used by Checkout.com: https://www.checkout.com/docs/resources ... gory-codes.

From what I can gather (without paying to purchase a copy of the standard), there are well over 500 MCCs currently in ISO 18245. Checkout.com is using about 270. So it's whatever code the merchant bank or service provider assigns to an individual merchant. It looks like that's who's in control of the originating data. But all the card networks, and therefore all the card issuers, will almost certainly accept any code that's valid per ISO 18245.

I'm probably making this as clear as mud. And this might not help much, but this PDF is an excerpt of ISO 18245 that includes the first 7 pages of the published standard; no list of individual codes, but a degree of explanation about what they are and how ISO is organized to maintain the standard: https://www.sis.se/api/document/preview/903637/.

[srothstein]

From the article:

Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”

Seems like it applies per transaction not per retailer. So, if you go to Academy to buy lures, it would show a different code than if you were to buy a pistol. I don't know.

It cannot apply per transaction, just per retailer. According to the parts of the standard that are public (and all of the news media so far), the code is assigned to a store by the company that is processing their transactions for them. The processor has to make sure the codes meet the standard that the credit card issuer will use, so they normally will use the ISO standard codes.

You can still get receipts from small stores where the actual items are not even listed. My hobby shop, for example, use an old register to ring up the sale by amount. If you pay by cash, it goes in the register. If you pay by credit card, they walk over to a small terminal where they manually enter the amount to charge and then swipe (or insert for chip) the credit card. All anyone could tell from the credit card transaction is that the purchase was at Dibble's Hobbies and what kind of store it is.

Consider the difficulty of deciding how to report individual items. Sure, if I purchase one item the transaction could be classified. But what if I purchase a gun, two boxes of ammo, a bow and some arrows, some camo clothing, some rods and reels and other fishing equipment all at one time. How would you classify that transaction? And remember that it is just one transaction to the credit card company. Since a computer needs to have clear cut rules in place (they are pretty bad at judgement calls) it would probably decide based on either the largest value item, the largest value category, the most items in a single category, or the overriding single classification of the store. The simplest way for everyone is to classify the store, which is what the standard says it does.

So, Academy is a sporting goods store, Joe's Guns was a general goods store but now has its own classification as a gun store, Tractor Supply is an automotive store (with a name like Tractor Supply, automotive would be a good guess for what they wanted to be known for), and H.E.B. is a grocery store. And in every single one of them, I can buy something that is not what the classification says.

[NotRPB]

SO, if it is a merchant code, not a transaction code ....
Looks like code for an FFL @ PAWN SHOP ...couldda been for a guitar/lawnmower/tools/fishin' rod/.....high capacity marine battery & trolling motor
Interesting, I recall in a nearby town, there once was a muffler shop (owned by an FFL) that had display cases of guns for sale in one bay of his shop where you could browse while your car was on the lift

[philip964]

I saw where gun stores will have ATM’s inside now.

[chasfm11]

I saw where gun stores will have ATM’s inside now.

That can only work as well as the limits for withdrawals on the ATMs. I went in to a teller to withdraw a cash amount that I felt might exceed what the bank would allow from the ATM that was just outside the building. Since the bank's machines dispense $100 bills, I found out that the limit had been raised to $1,000. If the machine has $20 as its highest denomination, the limit per customer can be less. Even ammo prices can bump into that ceiling. ATMs can help but are not the complete solution.

[parabelum]

“Senate Republicans demand credit card companies reverse decision to track gun store sales”

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/sena ... tore-sales

[Grayling813]

“Senate Republicans demand credit card companies reverse decision to track gun store sales”

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/sena ... tore-sales

Senate Republicans- good for making demands but not much on actually keeping us free. And just 12 out of 50…..

[anygunanywhere]

The GOP will save us.

[Rafe]

“Senate Republicans demand credit card companies reverse decision to track gun store sales”

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/sena ... tore-sales

The senators also demanded answers from the credit card companies on a number of issues surrounding the new labeling of gun store purchases, including their understanding of the ISO process, what input they gave the ISO, coordination with outside entities such as activist organizations or politicians, how the information will be used to curb suspicious firearm sales and how the financial privacy of law-abiding customers will be ensured.

I still contend that there is great confusion on that bolded part. Seems to me that our lawmakers are essentially ignorant of what the ISO is and how its global standards are applied. And despite empty-talking-head Letitia James, I'll wager a bet that this line from the Fox article is at least partly false:

New York City officials had put pressure on the ISO and banks to adopt the new code on gun shop sales.

I don't know how New York City officials could, or would go about, putting pressure on the International Organization for Standardization. I explained the basic ISO change process upstream. ISO officials in Geneva act in governance for the vote, but the votes themselves are cast, one per each, by the multiple countries participating on the commission for any given ISO standard. You can't pressure "ISO" because it isn't "ISO" deciding on changes to the standard. That's like idiot-boy Beto saying that Greg Abbott sets Texas state law. He doesn't. The legislature does.