Free speech as in speech protected by the 1st amendment? That's very specifically meant to curtail the government's powers, not the powers of merchants who decline to do business with others.
You could make a pretty strong argument that overly stringent regulations that result in sex workers, etc., being unable to process payments are a violation of that, but I'm not aware of why Visa/Mastercard don't support Gab & Parler. If it's that, you have a point. Otherwise, not really.
It's a reasonable assumption to make when someone invokes the term "free speech" in a majority-American forum. (I'm making some assumptions about visitors of HN here, who are probably more international than most places I'm in, but still.)
They didn't, back in the days. I remember diatinctly the only way to send money to Gab / Parler was Bitcoin. Maybe now they do, but that's not very important.
