My dear American friends,
I am a nobody in this fight but I feel I must do what I can to raise a flag (be it hastily constructed) around an issue that is crippling lawful businesses across the US.
I've been slowly working my way through the steps required to get Sentinel ready to begin R&D and pest control operations in the US and as part of that process I've been setting up our bank accounts and payment facilities.
The chaps at Erebor have been excellent but when I started trying to link payment providers I started to run into problems. It turns out its almost impossible for a fledgling defense company to sign up for such services in the US, everywhere I tried I was hit with some varient of:
"Firearms, Weapons & military goods/services - We don't support businesses in this catagory"
So in my dismay and confusion, I threw up a post on X and it turns out this is not only a known problem for others trying to work on Americas defenses but something that stems back to an Obama era decision that gave financial institutions every reason they needed to de-bank a litany of defense related companies.
It seems attempts were made to remedy this but clearly, that's not resulted in much headway.
Its trite to say "request for startup" and I'm sure
@JoshuaSteinman gets tagged too much already, plus in my humble opinion, this isn't something that we should just "work around". This restriction on financial services is wrong and actively undermining US companies working on US national security objectives.
Now I doubt my minuscule profile will achieve much alone on this and I can tag
@TheAKGuy,
@AAGDhillon,
@DonaldJTrumpJr and others until I'm blue in the face but if folks are willing to share this and make it part of the X conversation then perhaps we can get some sunlight on this issue.
I just want to solve invasive species issues, didn't think I'd be getting tripped up by underhanded tactics like this...