It sure sounds like this was forced on them by their payment processors, not that this was a voluntary move.
https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1428420774449266691?s=...
https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1428420774449266691?s=...
Or that no one would be able to properly use those payouts.
Unless people are getting paid directly in crypto, they are purchasing it from somewhere, and wherever that entry point is will have this problem.
While cryptos in of themselves are decentralized and inherently unregulatable, people forget that the interface with the real financial world is very much vulnerable.
You can’t buy it on Coinbase or many other exchanges, and the wallets are not as polished as the btc wallets I have used.
So if you’re trying to get your fans to pay you in XMR, you would be creating a lot of friction for them.
Maybe the state can find my addresses with a bit more effort than they can find my CC purchases but random people or friends and family not so much unless I want them to.
What I mean is if you ever send F&F money they'll see all your previous purchases too, and if OF is a well known wallet its easy for them to see that detail.
Your bank can't block shit and has to process whatever transaction you want short of the terrorist watchlist.
Is that true?
Yeah, I'm used to using that domestically and rarely for business. We usually use Giros[1] for business and now Swish for more personal stuff. I think most areas now have Klarna (even the US according to Wikipedia). I wonder how much they would interfere in things like this.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro
Please cite a source(s) for your claim, re: "banks can't block shit"
Parent is making distinction between credit cards and banks.
I don't think this is true for things that are in a gray area - storing profits from cannabis where its legalized and purchasing cryptocurrency
https://decrypt.co/39226/banks-still-blocking-crypto-transac...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2020/08/18/the-cann...
(Although the cannabis one seems to have changed recently)
Try opening a bank account at BoA for your cannabis business.
Unless Onlyfans actually has some decent traction outside sexual stuff. I find that hard to believe. If photos are still allowed, that’s something. But still.
Maybe I’m completely misinformed though!
Reminder that payment processor pressure is what has caused a lot of (legal) art to be pushed off of Patreon[0].
0: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of... (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17432801 )
Bans some forms of anime art: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/patreon-anime-porn-ban/
Banning for activity/art outside of art hosted on Patreon: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/patreon-gay-hypnosis-artists/
(articles may contain nsfw imagery)
But that pretext for excluding sex workers from banking and payment processing really falls apart with OnlyFans. These are small, repeated, digital payments that are highly traceable because they're coming from and going to known people. And the existence of the underlying work product is easily verifiable: are the accounts actively posting content or not?
If human trafficking were the actual risk banks were trying to mitigate here then it would be difficult for any business sector that relies on migrant workers to obtain banking services but I've never heard of an almond grower having trouble opening a bank account.
Isn't this site just a bunch of naked girls twerking in front of webcam?
That would mean you just have to confirm performer, photo ID and bank account all match. And the cost of any manual checks can be funded by your margin on the viewers' payments.
For a long time, so they somehow dealt with all the supposed fraud.
Then they grew large enough to tell digital product sellers to fuck off and stepped hard on the medication sellers (pretty sure they banned anything that's more than a supplement).
PayPal did the same, or maybe it was PayPal leading that, they were the same company for a long time.
For decades, the specific issue was with the huge chargeback/fraud rates associated with online porn.
- People paying for porn with stolen cards
- Or, more frequently, people disputing the charges when their wives see the credit card statements and get mad, so they claim the card was stolen etc.
The payment processors take this attitude because that way they can tell congress they are “doing something about vice”, and in exchange not be subject to undesired regulations.
I suspect this kind of soft pressure is being applied to Apple in the background. Everyone remembers what happened to Joe Nacchio, and resisting such pressure is harder now than it was over the last four years.
Very much so. Adult businesses have extremely high rates of friendly fraud, which is worsened by the facts that 1) they don't deliver a physical product, so it's difficult for the merchant to prove that a charge was legit, and 2) some customers will charge back purchases which they regret making, or which a partner disapproves of. ("No, honey, I definitely didn't sign up for that porn site, I'll call the bank right away.")
> Pretty sure credit card companies won't let you "chargeback" stripe clubs as fraud even if it wasn't you.
I'm pretty sure they will.
Remember in 2012 the whole hubbub of "pre-checked cross-sales?"
The act of hiding the checkbox below the fold of the screen and make the visitor think there's nothing more below so they won't uncheck the box that says "Yeah, charge me $1 for this 3 day trial, but also sign me up for all these other programs that will bang my card for $60-120/each"
You'd think you were getting a 3 day trial for a buck but instead you'd be getting a $300-1000 charge on your card.
The same technique, though not to such an extreme degree, was used to make candidate loans in the last US election.
I think it led the porn processors like ccbill to become more diligent about agreements / checking on customers doing such things and making sure they were not hidden if employed.
Sadly it's crap like that that is cited in making it harder / more expensive for small operators to do business, yet from what I gather it's harder to unsubscribe from the NY times than it is multiple porn sites these days.
I wish the exorbitant fees they charge due to higher chargebacks like that were only charged to people who engage in such things - it sucks that people who do a fair above board business are charged extra - it's just an excuse to soak others at this point.
Of course you can. If your wallet was stolen and the perp went to the champagne room at a strip club, you would not be liable for it. The strip club knows that as well so the onus is on them to actually check that the ID matches the person and the card.
I guess you could buy a chain of Bureau de Change outlets and have them convert cash to bitcoin, monero etc. I'm surprised this isn't already happening to be honest - they have all the infrastructure and licenses already.
Apple Pay is widely accepted because of three things, ordered here from least to most important: Apple applying pressure on the processors to accept it, paying them when necessary, and the fact that giant card data breaches like Target and Home Depot meant that the whole market needed to move away from magstripe anyway. People taking grass roots action was not a part of the change in any meaningful way (at least partly because it never happened).
There's this very popular cryptocurrency story that individual people have power in this market. The problem with that narrative is that virtually nobody cares enough this issue because it's just not that important. Sorry.
I doubt ApplePay would support it.
Perhaps a membership service like Costco. Probably someone has tried it, like perhaps a casino chain.
However unless there exist payment rails outside Mastercard or Visa, no one is going to build ”Stripe.” The only way would be Stripe running on crypto, but then how people get crypto in the first place if not by a card?
EDIT: Crypto also lacks chargebacks (so called hard money).
It seems that was a big part of WireCard's business. Didn't turn out that well. (Though their vice business might've been one of the few parts that actually made some money...)
Well, not really. The whole point is that if you do that, the government will apply soft pressure on you, until you go out of businesses.
Its an end run around of the 1st amendment, basically. A senator doesn't have to make a law, targeting you specifically. They just have to threaten your bank, that they will be punished, sometime down the line, in an unrelated law, and then the bank will, shut you down.
Edit: update numbers to be correct
for example, I think a lot of people hear this and assume the fraud is like, caused by an OF model - not delivering what was promised for example..
However seeing your statement, I am thinking it's that much fraud because criminals are getting stolen card / Id details from the darker webs and they are using other people's cards for fun things - and OF is a popular place to blow other people's money.
Maybe it's a mix of both - but I would think it's more the other way.
I remember when there were big numbers of fraud pointed at adult sites back in the day - but the core reason was so many offered $1 trials, and it was a popular way to test if a card number you got was valid / not reported stolen yet - use a cheap porn site.
I saw a (possibly npr?) story a while back saying that many criminals are now using dominoe's pizza to test if (stolen ) cards are good, because it's cheap and they get a bonus free pizza for a friend.
So it's not the pizza place or the porn site that is really encouraging the fraud or creating it.. unless you get into the weeds of they accepted a card without the exact right address and so they are a target for card testers.. that's a different discussion and such.
Everyone paying attention. Most people have never heard of him, and don't know that the USG regularly exercises huge power against private enterprise in this way.
Which congresspeople were told that payment processors were "doing something about vice"? How long ago was this?
but they do work for most non-recurring type things akaik.
I have seen people have them fail - because they quickly try to use them, not knowing that many places require at a zip code to be entered that matches the card.. and if you have not logged into the pre-paid-card's portal and set a zip code.. well fail it will.
https://directpaynet.com/new-visa-rules-dating-adult-info-pr...
So I could see why issuing banks may not want to support adult content, but then there could be a porn friendly issuing bank that may charge higher fees or something.
The chargeback rate on online porn is huge. As a result, where a traditional payment processor may be 1.3–3.5% depending on the business and the assessed risk, for a high-risk business, the rate can be much much higher. While Onlyfans keeps 20%, I'm guessing that they'd be badly hurt if they had to give half that to their payment processor. I'm sure they've looked at their numbers and they find the non-porn providers are more profitable to them, especially if it means they can lower their processing fees. Booting the porn providers will likely also make it easier to recruit more non-porn providers.
But many comments here imply that chargeback is almost as easy as clicking a button or asking nicely. How's that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_in_Lending_Act
"I forgot to disable automatic billing" probably wouldn't be a valid chargeback, though.
You can log in to your credit card account, click on a transaction, and open a dispute. You have to choose a reason for the dispute. The reason has to be something like, "I was charged for a product, but never received the product."
This just starts the process. The end result may be a chargeback to the merchant.
If I have a legitimate charge on my debit/chequing account, I too don't know how to reverse it directly through bank.
But if I pay with visa or Mastercard (actual credit cards), I call the toll free number or go to website and start process and go through it.
Partially it's that highbibterest rates pay for policies and systems and options and insurance. Partially that credit card fraud is common so systems must be easy for consumer. E.g. I had my credit card used by somebody else probably 5 to 6 times over 15 years. They'd call me when they detect fraud,we'd go through list of transactions, and based on quick word over phone they'd cancel all transactions that weren't mine. It's a very different process than banking.
I can log into my banks website and, selecting any payment transaction within the chargeback period, initiate a chargeback claim by just clicking a few buttons.
Of course, if you keep on charging back, eventually your bank will give you a polite call to let you know that they're closing out your account. This provides the incentive to be relatively honest about charge backs in addition to the fact that a false charge back is a criminal offense (fraud).
Where's the rage against a 3rd party platform ripping off the users?
Naw, I think this site has lots of people personally having to pay that 30% cut, but when other people have to pay it they don't care because it's other people.
I highly doubt this. There’s like no way a site that’s known for porn makes more money on what Patreon does. 99.999% impossible.
> Booting the porn providers will likely also make it easier to recruit more non-porn providers.
Pornhub can allow regular content but nobody is going to ditch YouTube, especially PG content creators, because of the name association.
But sounds like OnlyFans could have complied with verification requirements, like PornHub had done?
What if they decide people can no longer buy dildos or lube or condoms or guns or alcohol or meat on Fridays?
There’s no law with respect to “payment neutrality”??
More info is needed to conclude, but it wouldn't surprise me if their upstream providers made demands.
These aren’t explicitly linked in the story but it would make sense IMO
Payment processors provide a utility. They should have the right not to process illegal transactions and illegal activities. But as long as the activity is legal, it shouldn't be up to them to police morality.
They should be treated like utilities. If we go down this path, the city's water and electric utilities can decide to shut down the new hooters, because it is obscene and against god (according to conservaties), or it uses women and is an oppressor (according to some liberals).
Utilities shouldn't be involved in morality policing.
These do not have the high rates of chargeback that adult content does.
However, unless something has changed lately, for decades the issue with adult content + online payment processors is not morality related. It's because of the high fraud/chargeback rates associated with online porn transactions.
Unless it's SESTA/FOSTA related, but I don't think anything's changed on that front for a while.
It seems to absurd to allow companies with an oligopoly on most of the transfer of those notes to pick and choose what sectors are appropriate for citizens to interact with financially.
https://www.quora.com/On-every-US-dollar-bill-the-message-Th...
My point was that you can spend your cash wherever you want, in whatever way the seller will accept.
My point was not that sellers ought to be forced to accept bags of pennies.
Also, that quote on the dollar has nothing to do with your argument. You seem to be projecting a layperson’s interpretation of those words instead of the relevant jurisprudence.
This is an important distinction. Credit card payments are not notes. They are not cash. So these companies have very little to do with the transfer of cash.
The point of "legal tender" is that if you try to pay off a debt in cash, they can't claim you haven't paid it and take you to court. If you try to pay for your meal in a restaurant with cash and they refuse, you can just walk out and they wouldn't have a legal case (probably. in theory. not legal advice).
What's tricky is this has to be a debt, as in past tense. If you try to buy groceries with cash and they refuse, you can walk out but you can't the groceries with you.
Participation in the cash market is mandatory on anyone who is owed money. Everything else on top (credit cards, checks) is essentially voluntary. Merchants can take it or leave it, the processors can come or go.
If you want to make an argument about the outsized effect that Visa has on the US monetary system, that's totally legitimate. It just has little to do with the concept of "legal tender".
If you try to pay a $10K debt in cash, it will likely be seized for no reason whatsoever, on suspicion of criminal activity.
And yes Civil Asset Forfeiture is pure evil, I agree.
I think they would have a case, because you still owe them a debt. But then after you lose the case you can pay in cash. Just how I understand it, could be wrong. Doesn't change your point though.
The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," which states: "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."
This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services.
~
The important distinction is payment for goods or services vs payment for a debt. Dine-in restaurants work on debt (you eat the food then pay for it), but grocery stores work on payment for goods (you get the food and pay for it in one transaction).
If I owe you $5, you have to accept my $5 bill as legal tender
But if I want to buy something from your store that doesn't mean you have to accept my $5 bill - that's not a debt
The electrical company is mandated to provide power to Onlyfans' datacenters, so long as they are paying for the service.
Also there's basically only four payment processors: Visa, Mastercard, Discover and Amex. None of them specialize in adult business. There are downstream processors along the lines of PayPal and Stripe, and some of them specialize in adult business, but they're entirely beholden to the big four.
General public agrees that explicit material is bad.
Right now we have in Poland shops closed each Sunday - it is annoying for me. Selling alcohol in Norway is heavily restricted and I see more and more restrictions on alcohol sales in Poland.
Explicit material is tied a lot to money laundering, there is also a lot of scams tied to it and lots of stolen cards are used to pay for explicit material. It is huge cost for payment providers, all the laws for anti-laundering trump any "payment neutrality".
If you want to see naked ladies go to "a place" and risk on your own, pay with cash.
Just like Comcast can't tell me I can't download porn, Visa shouldn't be able to tell me I can't buy it, either.
So you are going to run naked in the city center because public opinion about this does not match what you want.
Laws, democratic or otherwise, can indeed constrain what payment providers will allow themselves to be used for.
Public opinion short of law should not be able to add further constraints.
IMO the question of “what should Visa and MasterCard be allowed to restrict?” is the same category of question as “what category of app should Apple and Google be allowed to restrict?”
Isn't reputational feedback one of the key enablers of the free market? Unless you want to move to a system that is fully centrally planned and noncompetitive, you'll have reputational differences (read: public opinion) affecting the success of a firm. To the extent that reputation affects a firm's success, the firm will make decisions (including "do we carry this unpopular thing") based on its reputation.
Shall we require all firms to do business with all potential partners, regardless of reputational repercussions, or if the partner has an established history of abuse (say, a contractor who repeatedly under-delivers on contracts)?
I don’t think that’s true when asked anonymously.
Doing so means that a third party is involved in every transaction you make, and that someone else will always have veto power over your commercial transactions.
Having an electronic alternative to cash would be amazing, but so far there’s nothing close to it with respect to privacy and freedom.
Then PayPal wanted to go big, other virtual currencies were caught in fraud scandals of their own (not their users'), people just lost trust and interest when card processing became more common.
Some are still around but sellers can't be arsed to use them. Maybe they will, once again.
2. Freedom of speech includes choosing who I work with
3. It makes sense to have certain restrictions on freedom of speech, especially as it relates to clearly harmful discrimination (i.e. racial discrimination, gender discrimination)
4. It does not make sense to restrict freedom of speech in the case of pornography, specifically, whether a company can choose to work with pornographers or not
I think they should start taking Bitcoin or Monero. Fuck MasterCard and whoever dictates what they do. If you are going to be forced into bankruptcy, at least do it in style.
Or just buy a bank. Surely they could have raised the capital.