Amany Killawi made a breakup playlist every time she was dumped, three in all. The playlists, which feature songs such as Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know and Apologize by OneRepublic, would make good soundtracks to romantic splits, but that’s not what they were. The playlists came together after Killawi was told by three different banks and payment processors they would no longer work with LaunchGood, the crowdfunding platform for the Muslim community she co-founded.
Stripe said its banking partner instructed the company to cut ties with LaunchGood after five years of working with the crowdfunding platform. Stripe also told the company it couldn’t be associated with any international humanitarian work in sanctioned jurisdictions like Syria – a prerequisite for a crowdfunding platform that caters to the Muslim community. Another bank told the company there were too many Muslim and Arabic names and figuring out if those names belonged to sanctioned individuals was difficult.
