FTC Warns PayPal, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard Over Debanking Practices, and It Could Mean Big Changes for Gaming

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has officially warned major payment processors about "debanking".

On March 26, 2026, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent letters to the CEOs of PayPal, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard, warning them against denying services to customers engaged in lawful business activities.

The move directly cites President Trump's Executive Order on debanking, signed on August 7, 2025, which made it clear that restricting access to financial services based on "political affiliations, religious beliefs, or lawful business activities" is simply not acceptable.

"It is inconsistent with American values to deny law-abiding individuals the ability to run their legitimate businesses and feed their families because they attracted the ire of rogue American officials, overzealous activists, or, more worryingly, foreign governments seeking to control public discourse," the letters read.

“That is why President Trump’s August 7, 2025, Executive Order on debanking makes clear that it is unacceptable to debank law-abiding citizens due to ‘political affiliations, religious beliefs, or lawful business activities.’”

Ferguson made it clear that deplatforming customers or cutting off their access to financial products could trigger a full FTC investigation and potential enforcement action.

What makes this particularly interesting for the gaming world is the context around what happened in mid-2025 [Timeline].

An Australian anti-sexploitation activist group known as Collective Shout ran a campaign against games with adult themes (depicting rape, incest, sexual torture, and child abuse), pressuring PayPal, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard to stop processing payments for platforms hosting such content.

The consequences: Valve removed hundreds of adult and NSFW titles from Steam and updated its rules to ban any game that "may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors." Valve publicly confirmed that payment processors had notified them of violations.

Meanwhile, itch.io de-indexed tens of thousands of NSFW-tagged games in a single sweep to avoid losing payment services entirely. They later reindexed some games, clarified they were reviewing content and suspended Stripe for 18+ games while seeking "alternative processors."

The frustrating part was that most of these games were perfectly legal. Many were visual novels or erotic games that fell within U.S. law. Some LGBTQ+ and thematically challenging titles got caught in the same purge.

Collective Shout later claimed "win," stating that they had initially asked Steam to ban these games, but when Steam didn’t respond, they "reached out" to the payment processor with an open letter, which quickly resulted in the ban.

Many have called it financial censorship. Groups like the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), the German games industry association (GAME), and others have spoken out against excessive censorship, financial deplatforming, and vague rules that hurt legal consensual adult content, indie developers, and creative freedom.

The community backlash included Change.org petitions urging Visa and Mastercard to "stop controlling what we can watch, read, or play."

Now, the FTC’s new letters bring hope. The order instructs regulators to drop the vague “reputational risk” guidance, which was the very justification being used to pressure platforms into pulling legal content.

As per the letters:

"Denying law-abiding consumers access to financial products and services due to their political or religious views, or facilitating the conduct of those who do, inflicts obvious and immeasurable harm on consumers, and there are no readily apparent countervailing benefits to consumers or competition from such censorious action. Consumers cannot reasonably avoid this harm, particularly where, as is almost always the case, the First Amendment-protected activity that triggered the adverse action against them had no logical connection to, or material bearing on, their commercial relationship with the payment provider or network. The market power and dominance of these payment providers and network operators—and parallel conduct by other companies—also suggest consumers are unable reasonably to avoid such conduct. It is thus critical that Visa/Mastercard neither deny its customers access to services due to their political or religious views, nor countenance unlawful debanking by members that process transactions on its network. "

For gaming platforms and indie developers, this is a meaningful development. In the short term, processors are now officially on notice, and any further crackdowns carry real regulatory risk. In the medium term, platforms like itch.io, which have already been exploring alternative payment processors, now have stronger grounds to negotiate fairer terms.

In the longer run, if the FTC moves from warnings to actual enforcement, it could set a precedent that protects all kinds of controversial but legal content, not just adult games.

That said, it is worth keeping expectations in check. Enforcement takes time, and not every game removal in 2025 was purely politically or religiously motivated. Some of these bans involved content promoting "rape, incest, sexual torture, and child abuse" and were fairly removed.