Payment processors and financial institutions like to use the (IMO mostly political) cover of "AML regulations" to decline service to sex workers and sex worker-adjacent businesses. Prior to the internet and OnlyFans there was at least a tenuous connection: sex work was a cash business and all cash businesses are at "higher" risk for money laundering. Pizza shops, nail salons, car washes, etc. Of course the pizza shops and nail salons and car washes still get to open bank accounts even though they're subject to higher scrutiny behind the scenes.
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?
Let me remind you that eBay allowed sales of digital products and OTC medication.
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.
Yes except there's one major legal difference: selling marijuana is (for now) a federal crime and selling naked photos is not. So AML regulations do actually prohibit banks/payment processors from servicing marijuana businesses but they do not prohibit them from servicing OnlyFans.
Yeah, exactly. Underage performers, revenge porn, nonconsensual stuff. These are common problems for every other site with adult content so why would they be immune.
I don't know much about OnlyFans, but isn't it mostly solo performances, where the performer is the channel owner? And every viewer is paying?
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.
I’m sure you’re right. But the same is probably true for Reddit and YouTube and Amazon but for some reason Visa and MasterCard don’t seem so concerned...
Well, all of them have been forced to curtail some kinds of content in response to outside pressure as well. OnlyFans is just unique in being all-in on this one kind.
It's six in one and a half dozen in the other. Banks only care about sex trafficking because sex trafficking is a crime and processing money from criminal activity is... money laundering. But regardless, what's the risk of sex trafficking here? Again, these payments are coming from and going to known parties. In fact, this should be a KYC dream come true. Because of the adult content OnlyFans collects (and in the case of payment recipients, confirms) the name, DOB, and address of everyone buying and selling on the platform.
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.
I don't think I've ever been on onlyfans, but anytime I've heard the name in a news context it is associated with pay-for-porn. I don't think I've ever heard of a non-porn thing on there, whether its in the news or people advertising their fan site. Do they actually have some sort of non-porn reputation that exceeds the porn reputation that I've never heard mentioned before? From what I gather, their reputation is about the same as pornhub, when it comes to "porn." I don't see how they fix that, and stay in business. This is just an opinion of a passer-by who casually hears the name. I don't think I'm much different than most people who have never been on there, which I'm assuming is most people in general.
If the party pushing is Visa or Mastercard (of which 'other' processors like Paypal, Venmo, Cashapp are beholden to as well) that would only really leave cryptocurrency, which is a large barrier to taking payments and would likely mean >90% revenue loss anyways.
Reminder that payment processor pressure is what has caused a lot of (legal) art to be pushed off of Patreon[0].
It's not so easy. The obvious candidates all ban adult content, and the ones used by the porn industry are either owned by the same or take cuts that make the AppStore look reasonable.
Taking a 30% cut doesn’t seem that bad compared to the alternative. Why lose 90% of your revenue and all your profit just to not give a 30 or 40% cut to shitty middle man?
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.
From what I understand OnlyFans has essentially no other product except for this type of content though. So I would have assumed negotiating with one of these processors for a somewhat more reasonable contract despite higher fees would still be more lucrative than giving up what seems to be their core business and revenue stream.
Not a reputation thing, unless that's changed lately. You can use credit cards for all kinds of porn and various shady things, they don't care.
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.
I just ignore all downvotes that don't give some sort of rebuttal. I just assume I pissed someone off by stating fact they didn't like otherwise. In fact, I think that would be an excellent feature - you can't downvote without an honest reply.
