The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles debanked from Stripe over 'legally binding order'

The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles announced on Monday that he was debanked from Stripe, an online payment system utilized by X, formerly Twitter, to pay its users involved with their creator program. The company confirmed the this in a social media post shortly after.

According to Knowles, the conservative podcaster has been debanked on Stripe for the past seven months and decided to make the issue public after receiving no resolution. Knowles, who has more than 1.3 million followers on X, has stopped receiving his X creator payouts as a result.

"Hi Stripe. Are we still doing this de-banking thing? Was it something I said? If we say that men can't be women, if we donate to pro-life charities, if we oppose two men buying eggs, renting wombs, and commoditizing babies ... Does that come at the cost of de-banking?" Knowles wrote in a post on X.

Stripe responded, "Hi Michael - we certainly understand the frustration around this and take these concerns seriously. We'd be like to help look into this further if you could reach out to us over DM with the email address on your account."

Knowles refused to take the company's assertion that Stripe would help him with the issue and fired back, saying, "I tried to resolve your debanking me privately for seven months. Now I think I'll resolve it publicly."

The Daily Wire host then "brought the receipts," revealing that he had been debanked from Stripe beginning in October 2024. Knowles noted that the timing was "suspicious" because it occurred just before the November 2024 presidential election. Stripe blamed X, but the social network told Knowles that the problem was on Stripe's end, according to email screenshots.

After a few more public exchanges between Knowles and Stripe on X, the payment company admitted that his account had been restricted due to "a legally binding order that was issued to us." Stripe did not provide any details about the supposed court order.

Prominent conservative voices on X responded to Stripe's claim:

Stripe, the largest payment processing platform in the United States, processed $1.4 trillion in payments in 2024, according to an annual letter. The company owns nearly 70 percent of the e-commerce payment processing market share.