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Comment by pstrateman | Hacker News Reader

High cost individual transactions sounds like elevated fraud risk.

I bet this isn't even their decision. (Card processor is probably making them do this).

From what I understand Bella Thorne promised full nude images. When the image that users payed for wasn't full nude this upset many users. Since OnlyFans lacks a refund system many users issued charge backs in order to get their money back. The large number of chargebacks are what prompted OnlyFans to make the changes.

For the Bella Thorne case in particular, it seems like it could be handled by onlyfans creating their own refund/fraud system.

Returning money received fraudulently seems reasonable and unlikely to be challenged by content creators (whom you are presumably clawing it back from). A short "escrow" period to enable this seems unlikely to be challenged by content creators.

The problematic case for chargebacks are probably "all the other ones" that aren't demonstrable fraud.

A refund system for this type of content is tough and is already why a lot of card processors don’t like dealing with porn.

There will be a lot of people abusing this system to essentially pirate porn - and I’m also unsure if only fans has the type of workforce to review every case

> A short "escrow" period to enable this seems unlikely to be challenged by content creators.

So people can pay for your content, look at it/screenshot it, and then refund it. I think content creators may have an issue with that, yeah.

Escrow does not imply that they can refund it without some sort of process agreeing with them.

For instance if they can prove that you defrauded them... as in the Bella Thorne case...

But why are card processors annoyed by chargebacks? It's pretty much the reason why these companies exist in the first place, and it should be considered normal part of their life.

Because chargebacks are manual processes and manual processes mean people and people cost $. The primary expense in almost any business is salaries.

Because it's extra work for them. The card company has charged the user, and then sent the money onward to the provider, when the user requests a chargeback, the card company gives the money back to the user, and attempts to take the money back from the provider. This requires human interaction in some cases, and therefore money ... so credit card companies don't want this.

> I bet this isn't even their decision. (Card processor is probably making them do this).

This is my thinking as well. Why else would OF willingly limit their own revenue? I doubt it's due to sincere concern for customer well-being.

> Why else would OF willingly limit their own revenue?

Support for arbitrarily high transactions might be a net negative for their revenue, if the chargeback rate is high enough.

this wouldnt suprise me, i remember back when i was working with adult content, we couldnt sell subscriptions over a certain price, even if they were for years. i think this rule is still in place.

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