You can cap the effective margin with even a very generous limit — say, processing fees no more than 3x the cost of servicing chargebacks — and mostly eliminate the concern about "quietly banning" businesses via processing fees.
But the thing is that there isn't much incentive to do this kind of skulduggery, because the companies are only protecting themselves from lawsuits and protests when they ban businesses, but imposing high processing fees would probably not satisfy the would-be tyrants who were trying to force these "bans".
No idea where you got "237%" but no, of course, the rule I have in mind would require charging fees proportional to the risk. This is well-worn ground. And if somehow the risk is double what the charge is (?!) then that's the risk. They'll have to step up their customer validation at PornHub.
The poster was noting there is historic precedent for parties to charge punitive fees to the point it’s defacto banned for things they don’t like. It would be challenging to stop without mandating some explicit formula too, which can be gamed.
> The poster was noting there is historic precedent for parties to charge punitive fees to the point it’s defacto banned
Obviously, the answer is to disallow that.
And if people break the law, and do it anyway, by trying to be "clever" then a judge and jury can punish them.
This punishment works especially well, with this thing called "discovery", in which the legal system can parse through your internal communications, to see if you are intending on defacto banning it.
> It would be challenging to stop without mandating some explicit formula too
No it wouldn't be.
Just do it, like we do many other laws. Give a vague description of whats not allowed, and let the jury figure it out. And give a large fine if they lose the court case.
That's enough deterrence to stop people from gaming the system. Just give them a huge fine if they try to do that.
Well, what do you mean by "people"? If you mean "a majority of voters", then I doubt that's actually true, for quite a few types of businesses and transactions that are currently banned from payment networks.
If you mean "those in power who can and do make decisions that a majority of voters wouldn't actually support", then sure, I think that's the case, but that doesn't make it right, and that doesn't make it inevitable, either.
Who gets to define the risk, though? Currently the payment processor gets to decide what's risky (and how risky) and what isn't -- with no need to justify it to anyone -- so they could just say that online pornography companies' risk justifies a -- totally proportional -- 237% fee (or whatever high number they want that makes using them infeasible).
Or does someone have to sit down and write a law or regulation that says "the risk for providing payment services to an online pornography company is X, and thus the processing fee is Y%"? I guess that could work?
