Visa subsidiary cuts ties with North Carolina gun shop because it 'sells guns'

A Visa-owned company that authorizes credit card transactions has cut ties with a North Carolina gun shop because it sells guns.

In August, management at Hyatt Gun Shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, was told by Authorize.Net, their shopping-cart-gateway provider, a subsidiary of CyberSource which is owned by Visa, that they were terminating their four-year business relationship because Hyatt was in violation of their “acceptable use” policy.

The Washington Examiner published the letter Hyatt guns received from Authorize.Net:

Dear Hyatt Gun Shop Inc,

Authorize.Net LLC (“Authorize.Net”) has determined that the nature of your business constitutes a violation of Section 2.xiv of the Authorize.Net Acceptable Use Guidelines and Sections 3.3 and 11.3 of the Authorize.Net Service Agreement (the “Agreement”). These sections include, but are not limited to, the sale of firearms or any similar product. Accordingly, pursuant to Section 4 of the Acceptable Use Guidelines, your ability to access and use the Authorize.Net Services will be terminated on September 30, 2013.

Hyatt, one of America’s largest gun dealers with a sterling reputation, said they were stunned by the announcement.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Justin Anderson, Hyatt’s marketing director told the Examiner. Anderson added that it took a week and thousands of dollars to line up a “gun friendly” credit card processor for their online business.

News of Authorize.Net’s anti-gun policy spread quickly throughout the local community and served as a call to action. Currently, Grass Roots North Carolina, a volunteer organization devoted to educating the public and engaging in grassroots activism to preserve firearms rights, is attempting to organize a national boycott of Authroize.Net, CyberSource and Visa.

On it’s website GRNC speculated as to why the decision was made. “Based on their policy statement above, one can only conclude that this discriminatory policy is being applied to gun sellers nationwide.”

“It looks like the small but noisy anti-gun crowd has gotten to what must be a jelly-spined PR department at CyberSource and Authorize.Net. Either that, or leadership at these companies have simply become anti-gun all on their own,” the GRNC statement read. “Whatever the cause, Authorize.Net is making it clear that businesses lawfully selling firearms are undesirable, and need not apply.”

Guns.com reached out to Authorize.Net but they did not respond to our requests.

Authorize.Net/Cybersource/Visa is not the only company to snub gun owners and the gun community in recent months. Starbucks, the java giant, announced last week that gun owners should leave their firearms at home. While it wasn’t an outright ban on concealed and/or open carry, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz made it clear that he did not want people to open carry firearms in his stores.

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