Background:

The financial technology industry has been complicit in the violence of right wing paramilitary and extremist groups. They've so far been, at best, willfully ignorant, and at worst, actively facilitating and helping these groups raise funding for their violent activities. Because their reaction has been to ignore as much as possible, it's up to you to name and shame them. They do control the platforms, they do have the ability to shut down their funding, they do know who these extremists are - they won't take action unless you demand it. Often these organizations have Terms of Service which are directly contradictory to their customers actions (i.e., not allowing fundraising for the express purpose of harassment or hate).

The major culprits are stripe, authorize.net, paypal, anedot, and square. Smaller organizations have often taken rapid action when confronted. You can defund hate.



To identify payment processors on known extremists sites:

1) Open incognito mode on your browser so as not to accidentally autofill any forms with saved credit card information. You may also want to use a VPN.

2) Find their donations page, merch stores, or other sources of revenue.

3) Navigate to the last page before checkout.

4) Right click, if on Chrome, and hit "inspect" - a box should pop up on half the screen exposing the CSS of the website. For a crash course in what CSS is, please check this to understand more. Most payment processors require a CSS element embedded, which allows for rapid identification. For an advanced video on CSS, please see this, although it's likely not necessary.

5) Within the box that's poped up, you'll now see a bunch of code. The code might include elements such as the below:

The form is generated by MemberPress, a plugin that facilitates memberships and subscription databases ("mepr") and uses authorize.net (run by Visa) for the payment as indicated by "authorize_net_payment". MemberPress could also link in stripe, or other payment processors. Other payment processors are usually prescriptive in how the code is written, Stripe (linked to Wells Fargo) uses "stripe" as an attribute. Square uses "cc-square", see below for another example, and you can always reference media in the deplatformhate twitter account to see multiple other examples of how the payment processors are declared. Ask around to a few tech savvy people if you're not sure - it's much better to be sure than wrong.

6) Things to remember:

- Often smaller companies have not had to deal with this and likely didn't know. Fringe groups try to take advantage of these processors without their knowledge. Try to contact them quietly to see if they'll do the right thing.

- Plugins that handle payment processors, such as woocommerce, are installed on the server and cannot be deprecated. You need to understand the difference between these services that handle payment processors versus the payment processors they leverage. Once certain code is installed or downloaded, the creator loses all control. Payment processors do not work the same, and require access to an API. Find the ultimate payment processor, or ensure that the software being utilized on top of the processor requires an access token, or a subscription for it to function.

- The first amendment does not apply to these companies. Nazi's aren't a protected class and these companies are private. They chose to work with these groups, and they do not have to. The rallies in CVille and otherwise were facilitated by large amounts of cash, processed by these orgs, and they're on the record saying they oppose it and it would never happen again. They've turned their backs on that commitment. Hold them accountable.

All the best,

DH