https://twitter.com/Mastercard/status/1313135039031455744

This is so ridiculous.

First of all, people have been able to get credit cards using just an initial instead of a first name going back forever. I've gotten cards that say M. Twainiac since I got my first CC in the 1970s. For people who don't want a credit card that reveals their sex, there's no need for these "TrueName" cards.

Second, some personal credit cards and all business ones allow you to get multiple cards in multiple different names so that different family members, employees and members of an org can use them.

Third, even back in the days when shop clerks still handled and checked credit cards, I as a tween, teen and young adult used my father's cards with his name on them all the time with no problem. At various times in my life, I as a female person also used cards bearing the name of various male bosses, of sexless institutions I worked for, of BFs and of my husband - again with no problem. If the charge goes through, no one cares!

With the technology used today, no store clerk sees or even touches your credit card.

Finally, even if the charge doesn't go through, or someone is using a stolen credit card, store clerks don't customarily "harass," "humiliate," give the third degree or - OMG - "assault" customers in those cases the way the voiceover in this video ad suggests happens to trans and enbies all the time.

Store clerks don't want to make a scene or provoke an angry outburst from a customer whose purchase has been thwarted. If anyone is more likely to get verbally abused and assaulted in such as situation, it's the clerk at the hands of the customer, not the customer at the hands of the clerk. As famous videotaped examples of enraged trans customers like "Gamestop Ma'am," the TIM who went ballistic in the car rental place, and the TIM who filmed himself going after the clerks in the shoe store who supposedly misgendered him, all have shown.

This is just encouraging hyper-sensitive people who are quick to take offense and tilt at windmills to see threats and bogeyman where there are none. It's fomenting fear in trans and non-binary people, not allaying it.

It's also encouraging these people to consider fiscal tools like credit cards as "validation tools" to prop up their silly, flimsy identities. Far better to tell these sensitive souls that store clerks aren't looking at them and judging them - clerks are bored, tired, underpaid and don't give a shit what customers are wearing, how they identify, what name is on their cards, or what they are buying unless it's tobacco or alcohol - and then they only "care" coz the law says they must and there are strong penalties for selling cigs or booze to underage kids. Store clerks only care that the payment goes through. What's more, ATMs, gas pumps and electronic card readers aren't scoping customers out and judging them as they use their credit cards - coz they are machines.

This sort of pandering isn't helping alleviate these people's hypersensitivity. It's just adding to it. How pathetic that anyone looks upon the name on their credit card or checks as proof that their identity is real and "valid."