[zhfliz]

if you know about/suspect it you report it.

how do you know with 100% certainty/due process that this is indeed the case and it's not just your ML algorithm going crazy?

people can also pay with physical money if they desire to do so.

[tchaffee]

What I asked is specific: if you know the money is for a hit job will you still accept the business and take your fee or is there a moral line you personally won't cross? Yes, it's the job of the police to investigate but do you want the freedom to not engage in business that you consider evil?

[kelnos]

And I think what many of us in this thread object to is that your specific question is irrelevant, because it's hypothetical and unrealistic. You do not know the money is for a hit job. You just don't. You may think that's what it's for, but you don't actually know, and you -- as a random employee (or worse, algorithm) of Payments R Us, Inc. -- should have no business playing judge and jury.

As for moral lines you are curious as to what people will and won't cross, those lines will be different for different people, and that's exactly why we shouldn't be putting these sorts of decisions in the hands of random unaccountable corporate employees (or, again, worse, algorithms).

You clearly want someone to say "no, of course I wouldn't allow a transaction to go through if it was for a hitman contract". But what if someone said "I see no problem with contract killings; I'd let it through"? That person could be working at Payments R Us, and clearly we don't want someone making that decision! So take it out of their hands.

The contract killer is of course an extreme example, but we already have real-world examples discussed here that illustrate the problem with this. Pornography is legal, and yet payment processors boot online porn companies from their networks. Someone who thinks pornography is immoral might have made that determination (I don't buy the "high risk of fraud" argument; you can always control for that with higher fees). Regardless of how you personally feel about pornography, do you think it's ok for a company to deny another company access to a big chunk of the financial system for entirely legal activities, just because they don't like them? I would sincerely hope that we can agree that sort of thing is bad.

[elzbardico]

Last time I checked both Visa and Mastercard have no problems being used to buy cigarettes or alcohol.

I'd bet that orders of magnitude more people die because of cancer caused by cigarettes and in episodes of domestic violence or traffic accidents caused by alcohol abuse than the number of people assassinated by hit killers hired online and paid with credit cards.

[zhfliz]

at best you suspect it, you don't know it unless you're on the sending or receiving side of the transaction.

it shouldn't be my decision whether i want to allow the transaction, even if i wouldn't want to allow it. i'm not in a position to perform due legal process to determine whether you're indeed being paid for a hit job.

the provider should be in a neutral position.

[kortilla]

That’s a bit of bullshit because these payment providers accept transactions for the government which consistently kills people at the local, state, and federal level every day.

If you “know” the money is for a hit job, you contact the FBI or local police and they can mobilize protective services and arrest forces.

[synecdoche]

Attacking a significant part of someone's ability to function in society instead of attacking the the perceived injustice itself on its merits, by informing law enforcement, who's job is to carry out due process, suggests lack of confidence in the merits, or lack of trust in the justice system. It doesn't seem to argue for fairness, unless the one arguing for it accepts being at the receiving end of the argument.