Why should payment processors force them to. They will make less money
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.
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.