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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
by elliekelly 5y ago
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?
- brador 5y agoThe issue is sex trafficking not money laundering here.
- elliekelly 5y agoIt'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.
- rapind 5y agoYou had (still have?) the same issue with marijuana businesses. Not easy to open a bank account for a marijuana business.
- elliekelly 5y agoYes 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.
- emodendroket 5y agoI would bet money that there is some portion of the content on OnlyFans breaking the law.
- koolba 5y agoLike what? Besides kiddie porn and sex trafficking / forced labor, what could possibly be illegal? Isn't this site just a bunch of naked girls twerking in front of webcam?
- emodendroket 5y agoYeah, exactly. Underage performers, revenge porn, nonconsensual stuff. These are common problems for every other site with adult content so why would they be immune.
- michaelt 5y agoI 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.
- emodendroket 5y agoI think there is a lot of content which is not solo.
- bserge 5y agoLet 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.
- emodendroket 5y agoI read some more about this and it seems like verification of performers is precisely the bone of contention. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-updates-policy-for-adult-content-sellers https://thehill.com/policy/technology/548279-mastercard-upda...