Following the tragic event at the Capitol Building last Wednesday, U.S.-based fintech Stripe has reportedly stopped processing payments for President Donald Trump’s campaign website. According to WSJ, a source close to the situation stated that Stripe is cutting off the campaign account for violating it policies against encouraging violence.
The media outlet noted that per the Terms and Conditions, Stripe asks its users to agree that they will not accept payments for “high risk” activities, which includes any business or organizations that “engage in, encourages, promotes, or celebrates unlawful violence or physical harm to persons or property.” The Terms and Conditions also revealed:
“Under no circumstances will any Stripe Entity be responsible or liable to you for any indirect, punitive, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting from your use or inability to use the Services or for the unavailability of the Services, for lost profits, personal injury, or property damage, or for any other damages arising out of, in connection with, or relating to this Agreement or your use of the Services, even if such damages are foreseeable, and whether or not you or the Stripe Entities have been advised of the possibility of such damages.”
Stripe previously disabled accounts in the wake of violent acts, including cutting off right-wing social media platform Gab.com after a gunman killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. The gunman notably used Gab.com to post anti-Semitic messages. Along with Stripe, numerous social media platforms have removed or restricted President Trump from their websites after the incident, which resulted in the deaths of five people.
Founded in 2010, Stripe is a technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. Businesses of every size, from new startups to public companies like Salesforce and Facebook, use the company’s software to accept online payments and run technically sophisticated financial operations in more than 100 countries.