Online payment processing company PayPal says it has ended its relationship with Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo after PayPal asked the site to take down campaigns raising money for supporters of President Donald Trump arrested during last week’s riot at the United States Capitol.
GiveSendGo told Bloomberg News that the situation was a “breakup.” PayPal sent a message to GiveSendGo’s administrative team requesting that they remove specific campaigns that violated PayPal’s terms of service. The company instead opted to end its relationship with PayPal.
“GiveSendGo founder Jacob Wells said in an email the site opted to shut down its PayPal account after the payments giant contacted it about ‘certain campaigns’ the company ‘wanted to censor,'” Bloomberg reported.
“We told them on a phone call, we disagreed with their stance but we would take those campaigns down,” Wells told the outlet. “After discussing it with our team we decided to stop using PayPal. We broke up first.”
GiveSendGo, which bills itself as “The Leader in Christian Fundraising,” is currently playing host to several campaigns designed to help raise money to fund attorneys fees and other legal defense costs for several individuals arrested during last week’s attack, Bloomberg reports.
Like many online platforms, PayPal says it is reassessing its relationship with certain users following last week’s events and removing accounts that violate their terms of service. The company put out a statement on Monday announcing their plans to censor certain users of their system, though they insisted that they “regularly” review “account holders” to determine whether PayPal’s services are being used according to the site’s terms of service.
“We regularly assess activity against our acceptable-use policy and carefully review actions reported to us, and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies,” PayPal said.
The company did not provide evidence of how consistently its standards are applied; however, they did note that they have “well-defined” standards that are regularly communicated to users.
“PayPal has a longstanding, well-defined, and consistently enforced acceptable use policy,” the statement continued. “Regardless of the individual or organization in question, we work to ensure that our services are not used to accept payments for activities that promote hate speech, violence or other forms of intolerance.”
GiveSendGo is not the first site to receive a warning from PayPal; CTV reports that a group called Joy In Liberty, which raised funds to send people to Washington, D.C., for last week’s rally, was also booted from PayPal’s platform.
Since last Wednesday’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, a number of social media and online platforms have ended their relationship with key figures associated with the incident, including President Donald Trump, who was permanently suspended from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Shopify, among others. Twitter also reportedly purged “thousands” of accounts sharing content related to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Several major corporations have also, in response to pressure from progressive activists, suspended campaign contributions to a handful of Republican lawmakers who voted against certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
Related: Now The Banks: Lenders Cut Trump, Other Lawmakers Off, Citing U.S. Capitol Riot