Top U.S. banks dropped customers over political and religious views, regulator says

Top U.S. banks have "debanked" customers because of their political or religious views, as well as their business activities, according to a report from the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The OCC said the report was in accordance with Mr. Trump's 2025 executive order requiring federal banking regulators to review complaints to identify financial institutions that had declined business with clients because of their views.

The OCC, which reviewed 100,000 complaints and hundreds of bank decisions between 2020 and September 2025, found that the nine largest national banks it supervises had policies that swayed their decisions based on political, religious or business activities.

The incidents cited in the report include the payment processor WePay, which is now defunct and was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2017. WePay closed the accounts of several merchants selling MAGA- or Trump-related items, the OCC said.

"Our policies prohibit discrimination against customers based on political or religious views," a JPMorgan spokesperson said. WePay's processes "did not meet our expectations. We identified it, corrected it, and the business no longer operates."

Other banks cited in the report, including Citibank and Wells Fargo, declined to comment and pointed to a statement from the Bank Policy Institute, a trade group for the banking industry.

The group added, "We support efforts to establish clear and consistent standards that promote access while maintaining sound risk management, including the administration's recent efforts to prioritize supervisory attention on material financial risk and rather than reputational risk."

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