Étiquettes
No one should have to justify what they ate for lunch and why after dining out with friends, just because they are Muslim, Arab or South Asian. But that’s the sad reality for many New Yorkers who are regularly singled out when they make payments, and the reason why our organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, New York (CAIR-NY), is representing Brooklyn native and community organizer Shahana Hanif in a discrimination complaint against payment processor Venmo before the New York City Commission on Human Rights, filed on July 21. The types of restrictions placed on certain transactions amount to profiling, lead to embarrassing social stigmas, and are an unacceptable and discriminatory barrier for whole groups of people to enjoy the same access to services as others.
The case is the first in the nation to challenge Venmo’s policy of targeting transactions on the basis of religion (Islam) and ethnicity. We bring this case to force Venmo to change its policy and to be transparent about how it filters and reviews transactions. Venmo will also serve as a warning to others in the financial sector that we will not allow them to escape responsibility for their unlawful conduct.
Our complaint against Venmo stemmed from a lunch that Hanif had with friends in late 2019 at the Al-Aqsa Restaurant in the Bronx. Hanif, of Bangladeshi descent, is also a candidate to become the first Muslim woman and South Asian on the New York City Council. As often happens at lunch, one person covered the bill and the others paid her back. But when Hanif tried to send $14 to her friend over Venmo, mentioning “Al-Aqsa” in her description of the payment, the transaction was flagged and restricted.
“Al-Aqsa” happens to be associated with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, located in Jerusalem. Venmo ultimately approved the transaction after a delay. It appears Venmo maintains a generalized policy of pausing transactions with certain terms for administrative review without looking at the context or location of the users. This practice has a disparate impact on those belonging to certain races or religions and is thus discriminatory in its nature and denies equal access to whole communities.
Experiences like that of Hanif are not isolated incidents. When she shared her experience on Twitter, many people quickly reported similar experiences of having transactions blocked for payments, ranging from a ticket for a Syrian play to, ridiculously, a gelato flavor called “Syrian lemonade.” This trend facing Muslims and those of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent became so prevalent that Newsweek conducted an investigation into Venmo last year. Newsweek discovered that transactions mentioning Persian restaurants were regularly flagged, while transactions mentioning “Cuba sanctions” or “North Korea food” were not. The advocacy group MPower Change also conducted its own investigation, and found that terms surrounding Middle Eastern or Muslim terms were flagged but terms like “KKK” or “cocaine,” which both violate Venmo’s terms of service, were not.
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