Just shut up and pay

It rightfully pisses us off when someone else decides for us what is good or bad, pretty or ugly, permissible or impermissible.

As long as there are laws, or a broad social acceptance of a norm, there is usually not a lot of friction. But in the digital revolution, all processes and principles are up for renegotiation.

Let’s look at the dominant players in the Internet payment segment. They are few, they handle insane amounts of money, they are in control, and they end up having a position that they really don’t want: to be experts of ethics.

How? This is how it happens:

If you have a store and work with MasterCard — everyone has to, or your business is dead, that goes without saying — there is an agreement you have to sign. MasterCard reserves the right not to allow transactions for products and services that are “offensive” or “lack artistic value”.

Really now? A bunch of bank clerks and coders at MasterCard have become the taste judges of the world?

A national bank doesn’t have to think like that. They issue their banknotes and leave to us to decide how they should be used.

And that is in every way more reasonable.

An idiotic prudishness, common in American companies, adds insult to injury: countless shops engaged in selling sexy clothes or movies with a naked picture on the cover have been removed from the major payment channels.

Over and over again, we, the public, delegate important principles to the tech world.

But there is a simple solution: if you run a payment service, stopping money from going through for reasons other than a court order should be illegal.

The ethical assessments? Leave them to us.

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Andreas Ekström is a journalist, analyst, author and award winning keynote speaker — based in Sweden, but working all around the world. He writes on Medium most Tuesdays. (Well… some Tuesdays.) Read more here: http://www.andreasekstrom.com