this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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The payments can become a legal liability for the processors. I believe there are federal laws that have penalties for anyone who facilitates transactions for certain prohibited goods or services. It's the same reason cannabis shops have such a hard time getting payment and banking services.
The payment processors have very little incentive to take risks here. As others have noted, there isn't much competition pressure.
EDIT: I went to find a source, and found the cannabis analogy isn't right. Seems that Visa and MasterCard really are the primary censors of the porn industry. This archived FT article went in depth. https://archive.ph/zXKuD
It's not even legal risk. It's brand risk.
There's a difference with cannabis shops because that's actually still federally illegal. As such, the required business accounts and tax documents required to use a national payment processor are often not forthcoming. It's a low level regulation that you can't generally tell a federal bank you'd like an account to store the proceeds of a federal crime.
With porn, the legal standards and protections are pretty well established. As long as the company is in possession of the required tax documents and business accounts, there's no legal risk beyond the standard due diligence they need to do for every customer. Visa isn't generally liable if a tire shop is discovered to be breaking a non-financial law. What processors don't want is to have their brand attached to something that they worry could make them look bad.
Not really. In the US, the first amendment protects a lot. Just like with YouTube censorship, capitalism has created a more restrictive regime through financial pressure than the government does. This has affected the porn industry, as well (see another comment in this subthread on that).