Note: Manny Moreno contributed to this article.
WASHINGTON – In the Executive Order (EO) creating the “Religious Liberty Commission,” Trump had listed topics for it to address. He ranked the “debanking of religious entities” third on that list. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, you’re not alone. In recent months, the word has gone from a niche compliance term to a potentially powerful strategy that could impact our community.
Debanking refers to a financial institution’s decision to close an account—personal, business, or nonprofit—based on perceived risk. The term is so new, it didn’t appear in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as of July 1, 2025. But the strategy has been used on advocacy groups, sex workers, and marijuana dispensaries with one objective: to shut them down.
White House Logo
What is debanking?
Debanking refers to the process by which a financial institution terminates or denies access to banking services. These decisions are often based on perceived legal, regulatory, reputational, or political risks, even when no illegal activity has occurred. That is, in one extreme, if a bank believes your brand damages their brand, it could engage in debanking.
According to NonProfitPro, debanking typically arises from “an organization’s transaction processing [being terminated] due to perceived financial, regulatory, reputational, or legal risk, often influenced by hot-button political issues.”
Integrated Cash Logistics adds that these actions may stem from insufficient account activity or perceived ties to controversial causes. Crucially, U.S. banks are not required to provide an explanation or offer an appeals process.
As financial systems have become more globally integrated since World War II, exclusion from banking services has become a powerful enforcement tool. Debanking is, in many ways, a domestic analogue to international sanctions—applied to individuals, nonprofits, and businesses without judicial oversight.
For those debanked, the impact is immediate. Without access to a bank account or payment processor, they may be forced to operate in cash, lose recurring donations, or miss payroll. The effects are especially harsh on those without legal teams or financial buffers. As one observer noted, “The nature of power is to insulate its holders against bad outcomes.”
By 2024, complaints about sudden account closures began to mount. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) cited CFPB data showing that just four banks—Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo—accounted for half of the 12,000 complaints filed since 2023. The stories often shared a pattern: no warning, no explanation, and no way to appeal.
A Disproportionate Impact on Nonprofits
Muslim charities have been particularly affected and have been raising concerns about the strategy. A 2023 report from the U.K.-based The Muslim Charities Foundation (MCF), titled The Landscape of Debanking within Muslim Charities and its Impact on Charitable Activities, found that 68% of surveyed charities had trouble opening accounts and 42% had experienced complete loss of banking access.
These disruptions can be devastating. Many nonprofits rely on automated, recurring donations. If an account is closed, it can take weeks to transition to a new payment processor, during which time essential funding may be lost.
A Charities Network article in the U.K. reported that one small charity’s leaders were forced to inject £40,000 of their own money to stay afloat after being debanked. A broader survey revealed that 5% of U.K. charities experienced account freezes within a single year. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, U.K. banks closed more than 343,000 accounts, some under anti-fraud, anti-money laundering, or counter-terrorism policies.
MCF argues that many of these closures result not from wrongdoing, but from algorithmic errors or regulatory overreach. In some cases, policies intended to prevent terrorism financing may conflate religiously mandated giving (zakat) with illicit activity, either through ignorance or bias.
The Brickell Financial District in Miami [Photo Credit: MJTM
Debanking According to The Christian Right
On March 22, 2023, the Alliance Defending Freedom first published an article,” De-banking: Cancel Culture’s Newest Threat.” In that article, they defined a general economic problem, debanking, as a specific political problem to conservative Christians. It argued that “60 percent of the 75 largest tech and financial companies … have expansive ‘reputational risk’ or ‘hate speech’ policies that threaten their customers with cancellation or punishment.” In response, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), chair of the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, introduced legislation to eliminate reputational risk as a component of regulatory supervision. Scott’s bill would remove “reputational risk” as grounds for debanking and has received widespread support.
Meanwhile in Silicon Valley: Crypto Tech Bros for Trump and Debanking
On a YouTube video of The Joe Rogan Experience, the co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen described debanking. He said it occurred “when you or your company is [sic] kicked out of the banking system.” He knew of “30 tech company founders who had been ‘debanked in the past four years.” These issues with debanking drove crypto tech bros into supporting Trump.
He warned that what began as “Operation Choke Point 1.0”—a 2013 DOJ initiative aimed at curbing access to banking for certain high-risk industries—had become “Choke Point 2.0.” Under the Biden administration, Andreessen claimed, the program had evolved into a system of informal sanctions against political opponents, crypto businesses, and alternative financial models.
Besides crypto tech bros, Andreessen continued, “fintech” entrepreneurs have been debanked. The financial system is trying to protect the big banks.
“There’s no law. No due process. No appeal,” he said. “It’s a privatized sanction regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens what we do to Iran.”
“You get kicked out of your bank account,” Andreessen said, “You can’t do credit card transactions.” He described it as the mingling of government and companies.” The government puts pressure on private banks to get them to silence people. That indirect pressure creates a legal “privatized sanction regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens what we do to Iran.”
Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs)
Andreessen also raised concerns about the broadening use of the “Politically Exposed Person” (PEP) designation, originally designed to flag foreign political leaders as higher risk for bribery or corruption.
LexisNexis defines a PEP as “someone who, through their prominent position or influence, is more susceptible to being involved in bribery or corruption.” Yet the criteria vary across jurisdictions, and financial institutions are under increasing pressure to preemptively derisk by closing PEP accounts, even without evidence of misconduct.
A Tool in the Culture War
While debanking is certainly a legitimate civil rights and economic access issue, the strategy is increasingly being weaponized as a cultural wedge. In the process, serious concerns about transparency, algorithmic bias, and risk-based discrimination remain very murky parts of the debanking strategy.
To be clear, President Trump’s Executive Order seeks to protect against the “debanking of religious entities,” and certainly, the removal of reputational risk as a reason for debanking is potentially protective. However, when viewed alongside other recent orders—such as those aimed at combating the so-called anti-Christian Bias—it raises broader concerns about how debanking policies could be selectively applied. The language leaves room for these protections to favor certain religious or ideological groups, while exposing others to scrutiny or exclusion.
Even a loosely interpreted application of debanking can have profound consequences, particularly for communities like ours. Many Pagan organizations—and many small nonprofits in general—are volunteer-run, locally based, and decentralized. As such, they often lack the legal resources, political influence, or media visibility needed to defend themselves when facing institutional discrimination.
Access to financial infrastructure should not be contingent on religious affiliation, political ideology, or algorithmic profiling. Presumably, all religious non-profit organizations would gain protection from debanking. Yet the current framing of these executive orders to protect Christians and their organizations provides little safeguard that non-Christian groups will receive equal protection.
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