The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission has put multiple companies, including a Big Tech giant, on notice that biased and politically fueled debanking is unacceptable.
On March 26, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson called out Stripe, Paypal, Visa and Mastercard, warning them that the FTC under President Donald Trump would oppose viewpoint discrimination with regard to debanking. Ferguson shared a 2021 headline about Stripe and PayPal financially censoring President Donald Trump‘s campaign and his supporters’ accounts. “No one should be de-banked because of their political or religious views,” Ferguson emphasized on X. “They did this to President Trump, and they may do it to you too. Our citizens should speak and worship freely, not dance to the tune of soulless creditors with a political axe to grind.”
In follow up X post, Ferguson put payment processors on notice: “the Trump-Vance FTC will not hesitate to act against companies that debank customers in violation of their terms of service or the reasonable expectation of consumers.”
In the post, Ferguson included a formal letter he submitted to the CEOs of Stripe, Visa, Paypal and Mastercard and warned that the FTC under Trump “will not hesitate to act against companies that debank customers in violation of their terms of service or the reasonable expectation of consumers.”
In the press release on his letters to the CEOs, Ferguson cited Trump’s August 7, 2025, Executive Order on debanking, which forbade debanking “law-abiding citizens due to ‘political affiliations, religious beliefs, or lawful business activities.’” Ferguson also warned the CEOs that it is “inconsistent with American values to deny law-abiding individuals the ability to run their legitimate businesses and feed their families because they attracted the ire of rogue American officials, overzealous activists, or, more worryingly, foreign governments seeking to control public discourse.”
If Stripe, Visa, Paypal or Mastercard violate their terms of service or unreasonably deny customers service, they could be in violation of the FTC Act, Ferguson noted.
Indeed, Media Research Center has logged 17 separate instances of financial censorship from PayPal alone in its unique CensorTrack database. Then, in January 2021, PayPal cut its ties altogether with Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. In September 2022, PayPal canceled the account of children’s advocacy group Gays Against Groomers. Visa, meanwhile, blacklisted free speech platform Gab. In December 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced that, between 2020 and 2023, nine banks engaged in biased debanking activities while under government-granted charter.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
