An update on my brush with debanking

Working on what the kids call a banger story1 about Shane Tamura, the New York skyscraper shooter.

But I wanted to update you on American Express’s bizarre decision to reject Unreported Truths subscription charges as fraud after processing them for years.

I’m going further into this issue not only because it has annoyed more of you than I’d like. This the first time I have seen the frightening power of financial intermediaries — banks, credit card companies, and payment processors — up close.

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(Help me support the banking system! And my kids.)

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The background: Substack uses Stripe to handle credit-card payments. Stripe is an Internet-based payment processing company, and the setup is relatively simple.

Provide tax and business information, add a bank account, and presto, receive card payments. Stripe charges 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction — not ideal, especially for $6 monthly subscriptions, but okay. Substack takes another 10 percent.

But at some point in the last couple of months, American Express decided to stop processing subscriptions for Unreported Truths and instead reject them as fraud.

I still can’t be sure why Amex decided to flag my reporting. Notably, however, the first prohibition in its “Merchant Reference Guide” — even before fraudulent sales — is for “adult digital content sold via Internet Electronic Delivery.”

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(I know it when I see it. Not that I’m looking!)

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Let’s agree American Express’s phrasing is unfortunate.

Practically every Substack, including this one, qualifies as “adult digital content.” They mean pornography, of course, but for whatever reason they avoided the p-word.

Anyway. Let’s all also agree Unreported Truths is not pornography. Not even the “Become a Better Lover” softcore kind.

In fact, Unreported Truths might be the opposite of pornography. For sure the Berenson v Biden article yesterday was what the kids call a “boner killer.”2

Nonetheless, the legal owner of Unreported Truths is a little company (my company, I’m the sole owner) called Blue Deep Inc. Again, this name didn’t bother Amex until a couple of months ago. Now it seems to.

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Here’s the real problem.

Amex just decided to stop rejecting your payments to me without even telling me. Much less giving me a chance to appeal.

Worse, Amex didn’t just reject the payments, it flagged them as fraud. Many of you didn’t connect Blue Deep with Unreported Truths — why would you? $60 is a fairly generic amount — and you canceled your cards.

In some cases, this happened multiple times, until you got frustrated enough you just stopped trying. I can’t even blame you, I’d be annoyed too.

Stripe didn’t tell me what was happening either, not even with an automated notification to let me know that a lot of American Express transactions weren’t going through. And Unreported Truths, like every Substack, has readers unsubscribe every day. People decide they want to support a different writer, or they tighten their budgets, or they cancel a card and don’t replace it.

So I didn’t even realize what was happening until you started emailing me.

For the most part, you were annoyed but polite (Unreported Truths readers are the best). And one of you spent enough time on hold with American Express to get its explanation (I say again, Unreported Truths readers are the best), which was that I’d recently changed “information regarding [my] company.”

Untrue. I haven’t changed anything in my Stripe documentation since I set it up. Not even the bank account that receives the payments. I haven’t even changed the pricing for the Substack (not yet, anyway).

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(Blacklisted from the Black Card. And all the others.)

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By this point, a lot of you — I don’t know how many, but a bunch — have complained or told American Express it was wrong and Blue Deep is not a fraud.

But Amex just keeps rejecting renewals. And it seems not to offer any appeals process, at least not for merchants my size. I have looked online and can’t even find a contact.

Stripe doesn’t care either, it processed $1.4 trillion in transactions last year, I’m not even a speck.

Finally, I contacted Substack, which suggested I try to remove all references to Blue Deep except the one legally required one from my Stripe documentation. I thought I had already done so, but I guess I missed one.

I think/hope that change will fix the problem.

If it does, I will be frustrated that I didn’t do so earlier.

But if it doesn’t, I will be flat-out nervous.

Because I don’t think Amex has it in for me. It’s far more likely the company would have tried to debank me at the height of mRNA hysteria in 2021 or 2022, after Twitter banned me and the Biden administration said “misleading narratives” — by which it meant mRNA criticism — were a “terrorist threat.” (Yes, that actually happened.)

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(See for yourself.)

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But I can’t be 100 percent sure American Express is not playing some weird political game, not unless and until they stop refusing to process payments.

Even assuming they aren’t, though, they have shown me just how much I depend on them — as well as Visa, MasterCard, and Discover — without even realizing it.

The Wall Street Journal has reported the White House is preparing an executive order that will fine banks found discriminating against customers on political grounds.

As far as I’m concerned, that order can’t come soon enough. Businesses cannot survive without open access to the financial system (and individuals barely can, as more and more businesses refuse cash entirely).

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(Support me against the banks. And the drug companies. And everyone else who fights the truth. For pennies a day.)

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Anyway, if you’re an Amex customer, keep me posted. Hopefully, this story will have a happy ending.

No, not that kind of happy ending!