This whole payment processor as paid content censor system is absurd. Don't need payment processors looking over everyone's shoulder "oh man you shouldn't deal with them ... or buy that".
Local sword making company ran into getting blacklisted by processors. These guys are professionals and well known in their business, not some randos. But when it comes to payment processors everyone is small potatoes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They couldn't even find out why it happened. The amount of work they had to do to just get a clue on what was going on was incredible. It took in person visits and directed from bank to bank to bank to understand what happened. And as far as I know they still haven't found out the root cause. They managed to get some work around but who knows how long that will last.
These processors are not content curators / investigators and they're clearly not putting much effort into actually investigating or allowing anyone to dispute these things through a reasonable process.
There's no sense to these systems, you can just be cut off with no warning and the payment processors have no obligation to care or tell anyone anything.
I think this game censorship row, which apparently is expected to extend to violent games in general, taken with other past censorship by financial companies against Wikileaks, is evidence that finance in general is infrastructure. You can’t have a working democracy or freedom without these being available just like electricity or water are. We need heavy regulation or a public funded alternative, or the nationalization of the largest financial companies. For once, I will call and write my legislators about this topic.
>There's no sense to these systems, you can just be cut off with no warning and the payment processors have no obligation to care or tell anyone anything.
You can thank the Bank Secrecy Act as amended by the PATRIOT act for that. It basically deputized every licensed money transmitter to act as an extension of law enforcement through the imposition of KYC/AML requirements, which is accompanied by the tendency/incentive to de-risk the bank.
No, it doesn't solve the actual problem which is both: a) "conveniently pay for whatever is legal" and b) "have some recourse if someone takes my money and doesn't send me anything".
You may argue that current payment processors do a poor job at b) but they do an infinitely better job than crypto since it's a division by zero situation.
It solves the actual problem of "it is literally impossible for me to pay for this digitally" with "it is possible, albeit somewhat inconvenient, to pay anyone digitally for anything".
> b) "have some recourse if someone takes my money and doesn't send me anything"
Your recourse is the legal system. Crypto isn't mutually exclusive with working with trusted, legally registered corporations whom you can sue.
You are concerned that a vendor who failed to deliver a product you ordered might cancel your account if you place a chargeback on the order?
If that is a fear shared among the general population, shouldn't that be a clear anti-trust concern?
Is losing your Amazon account that big of a deal? Are there really no practical alternatives? Is this fear of displeasing Amazon rational? If so, how come I don't hear any bells going off in government regulators?
I am not the person you're replying to, but I am also concerned about this issue.
This is a concern for people who have a lot of digital content under Amazon's umbrella. I have hundreds of audiobooks, ebooks, music, and movies - and if I lose my Amazon account I lose access to hundreds if not thousands of dollars of content.
As for trying to constrain Amazon to play fair, and treat the peasants nicely? Good luck.
Amazon is a rival to Google in terms of content delivered to people, and, like Google, Amazon performs a lot of services for the federal government. They have lobbyists, legal teams, and even politicians in their pocket.
Your subjective experience, or a lack of interest from legislators, does not mean these issues do not exist.
Perhaps more accurately, crypto can solve this problem. Right now it's hard, but if you want a solid permanent solution to this problem, crypto's a better long term bet than "let's hope the banks become less prudish."
Hmm, it could? From a fundamental POV, all the technology can do is act as a public ledger, executing and confirming transfers of money from one "account" to another. There's a whole lot of stuff being experimentally built on blockchains, so what you're looking for is possible.
I will say -- "immutability" isn't necessarily the horror that people make it out to be. Which is to say, oh $500 gets transferred from A to B incorrectly. The fact that you literally can't "undo" that doesn't much matter -- you just transfer 500 from B to A on a 2nd transaction.
1. Some new or existing payment company helps merchants to transact in cryptocurrency, because it's difficult for the merchants to do it themselves.
2. This payment company now becomes the new target for attacks, and the only change is from fiat currency to cryptocurrency.
An obvious answer to #1 is for merchants to process cryptocurrencies themselves, but that implies that all the problems in dealing with fiat currency (fraud detection, accessibility, scalability, etc.) is somehow easier with cryptocurrency, and I am not sure that is the case.
I’m so tired of crypto bros. No it doesn’t. You can’t replace currency with a speculative asset. Maybe with a stable coin it’s possible, like USDC or USDT. Even then I’m skeptical because the ecosystem is garbage and security is ass.
And yet it doesn't seem to have much adoption as far as this solution goes, probably for reasons that everyone mentions elsewhere / crypto isn't used for these kinds of transactions at much scale.
>payment processors as paid content censor system is absurd
So you don't like it when payment processors blacklist sexual content. What about racist content? Are you fine with someone selling a game mod that for example replaces all people of color in a game with people of European ancestry using something like Stripe?
It actually shocks me that anyone thinks that's supposed to be an obvious case for rejection of the concept, we've had similar for free for the longest time.
Being able to sell such stuff incentives higher quality, doesn't it? It takes a serious amount of work to dig through all of Baldurs Gate, for example.
My example includes none of that. It's clear this duopoly system doesn't work as far as content filtering. Nothing about being a payment processor makes them good at evaluating companies, the individual bits of content they provide, and being a gatekeeper.
That's kinda how it works in Germany and many other European countries. Thinking of RAC bands like Landser. Mein Kampf is now legal as long as it comes with a commentary. The game mod I've mentioned, not sure if it would go through. Depends on the details, I guess
I trust itchio to decide for themselves what kinds of content they want to host - I don’t like seeing Stripe/Paypal try to blackmail them into censorship.
As I suspected, the problem seems to be Stripe and Paypal as this information comes out.
I kinda feel bad for the call centers and the legion of Reddit/Twitter users who were mislead by a few random meme protest .gif files. But I already learned my lesson back during the Reddit Boston Marathon bullshit: the crowds are stupid. Don't trust the hype, don't trust Reddit Posts that cite other Reddit posts that cite a tweet. Wait for real info.
That being said: Visa and MasterCard have been dicks in the past and somewhat deserve attention. I'm just a bit sad that this particular case is turning out to be more of a Stripe/Paypal issue instead as it means a lot of energy has been misdirected.
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I've still got my Discover card so that if the real call for action ever comes, I'm ready to move off Visa/Mastercard. But people need to seriously fact check their work before hyping an internet brigade next time.
As I suspected, the problem seems to be Stripe and Paypal as this information comes out.
I'm not convinced that VISA and Mastercard are totally hands off about content and that Stripe and Paypal are going against their wishes to enforce content restrictions completely on their own.
Mastercard never talked to Steam directly. That means all the discussion about Mastercard (from Steams point of view) is practically hearsay.
Meanwhile, we have itch.io being VERY clear here that it's Stripe that has a no-porn policy. That gives us a DIRECT cause. And Stripe ALSO admits that they don't allow porn on their payment network.
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Has Steam even said who their payment processor is yet?
> Has Steam even said who their payment processor is yet?
Steam definitely support PayPal in some areas, but their consumer terms and conditions don't disclose whether they use an intermediary for handling card payments.
The worst were the people saying to harass Itch despite Itch also being the victims. I even saw some of them, when corrected about where the actual problems stem from, just say that "companies are not your friend" line and get super mad at the people pointing them away from attacking Itch.
"When the shit hits the fan it doesn't distribute equally".
The payment processing system is so complex and opaque even people in the industry rarely understand anything outside their little corner of it.
People are going to be angry at the most visible parts of the ecosystem.
Itch is clearly making the effort and I suspect they will come through with a new processor ultimately. They surely have enough business that processors that handle adult industry will most certainly negotiate beyond their typical rates. Especially considering the nature of the bulk of their business isn't directly adult oriented.
Payment processing being opaque, heavy handed, and restrictive all started with the patriot act, and until it's gone payment processors can't be the dispassionate processors of transactions people expect.
It's very strange that porn is the thing rallying people to dismantle this nonsense.
Then why the weak sauce denial from Mastercard? They could have denied much more than they did, and had every incentive to do so, but chose not to rule out allowing anyone acting on their behalf enforcing rules that they wrote, and chose not to deny taking any action in response to social media campaigns they were certainly aware of and were explicitly named in. They offered no explanation as to why they had rules on their books that, according to their statement, they have no business enforcing.
If the crux of the issue is that everyone has arranged a system where nobody has to take responsibility for anything, none of what you’ve said absolves Mastercard (or Visa) of any guilt.
> Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.
This seems like a rather strong refutation of the discussion.
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> If the crux of the issue is that everyone has arranged a system where nobody has to take responsibility for anything, none of what you’ve said absolves Mastercard (or Visa) of any guilt.
Stripe has literally been saying no porn on their network since the freaking start of this controversy with Itch.io.
It’s really not. They’re saying they didn’t do it themselves, but aren’t ruling out it being done by proxy, which is exactly what Valve are saying happened. Actually, it’s a triple weasel, since they also didn’t evaluate any games, they went off unverified 3rd party reports, and aren’t targeting ‘game creator’ sites, but game distribution sites. It could be a potential quadruple weasel, since they could have not ‘required’ any restrictions, but presented such onerous alternatives that it was a de-facto requirement that still fell short of the strictest definition of the word.
And yet there is still porn on Steam, so clearly this is more than just Stripe.
Steam is on the record that Mastercard literally never interacted with Steam on this entire controversy.
The entire discussion is between Steam and it's payment processors. And Steam, for whatever reason, hasn't publicly shamed (or discussed) who those payment processors are who were pushing these rules.
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For now, we can rest assured that Itch.io case is being well discussed. We see it is Stripe and Paypal for Itch.io and unless conflicting news comes out, I'll assume the same for Steam.
That is irrelevant. The payment processors are enforcing Mastercard’s rules, and explicitly state as much. Mastercard don’t need to ‘interact’ with anyone if they have intermediaries willing to do so on their behalf. Mastercard’s own rule 5.12.7 /is/ conflicting news. It states that they have sole discretion, so there is little chance of any partner invoking it against Mastercard’s wishes. Just in a non-interactive way that only ends up with a few turbulent priests getting put to the sword.
Then why can I buy porn with my MasterCard right now?
Answer: because the company I buy Porn from uses CCBill, not Stripe. You know, like what the article says Itch.io is looking into.
There are specific payment processors for pornography. This is accepted because everyone knows that Porn gets more chargebacks (Hubands often have to chargebacks and pretend they didn't buy porn when their Wives find the charge). So there's a large degree of customer fraud in pornographic purchases.
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Like Steam, Mastercard, Itch.io and even stripe themselves are pointing out: the problem is solidly the payment processor. Or Stripe in this specific Itch.io case.
Done. Now when another Manga / Doujin Library gets banned for too much porn on behest of MasterCard, that will be the time to complain. But for now, stand down. This issue is becoming a boy cried wolf like overreaction. Especially as the facts are finally coming in.
That’s moving the goalposts. The fact that Mastercard doesn’t even apply their own rules consistently is another, arguably even greater problem that you would probably be better off not mentioning. Stop deflecting and explain why Mastercard lied by omission by claiming they don’t do something that their own rules clearly state that they do. If you can’t do this, you’re not interested in the facts, you’re just whiteknighting for a poor defenseless international megacorporation with veto power over a huge portion of the world’s economy.
I've been following this protest for a bit out of curiosity (because I really do think Visa/Mastercard is problematic).
But almost all the Reddit posts or Tweets I've seen are about Visa call centers or Mastercard call centers. The number of people protesting Stripe is miniscule in comparison (if there even is anyone to begin with).
> I kinda feel bad for the call centers and the legion of Reddit/Twitter users who were mislead by a few random meme protest .gif files
If you think it was just a few image memes, you really haven't been paying attention. Check out my post history here for better information than you currently have on how credit card companies are definitely contributing to this problem, if not a critical link in the chain that causes this problem.
Personally, I believe that the problem is upstream of credit card companies even. The problem is with activist investors with far too much influence, able to bully the CEOs of Visa/MasterCard/etc. to accomplish political outcomes.
*: Yes, we can quibble about who was “actually responsible”, were the various intermediaries overzealous, etc., but it’s enough to note that in the counterfactual where Mastercard doesn’t have a rule 5.12.7, there is no censorship of Steam in this manner.
I mean, I can buy porn right now with my MasterCard. Do I need to start posting links as proof?
We all know that the issue is with the categorization of the transaction. MasterCard/Visa has higher chargebacks and thus higher costs associated with porn. When Stripe focuses on non-porn they can get much cheaper pricing. When Itch.io buys cheaper fees from Itch.io, they get smacked due to some porn being on the payment network.
So now itch.io is realizing the 'price' of Porn and we will see if itch.io decides if it's worth the cost. Especially because CCBill or whatever is going to be a % higher on all transactions (including non-porn), it's likely that it's only efficient if itch.io makes a 2nd website for ONLY pornographic games or something.
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It's.... really messy and muddy. But messy / muddy situations don't make good little memes or call to action on Reddit/Twitter.
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I am still pretty sure that Visa/Mastercard are problematic. But if this is going to be a sustained push, people need to be much much smarter about the information and also need to direct their energy efficiently. You can't just call up the internet mob like the boy who cried wolf.
I think the message needs to be about the power and control of Visa/Mastercard and payment processors to cut off free speech in general. Porn could be a good starting point for free speech discussion and seems to come up as a practical example often. But we still need to get the details correct otherwise we risk making fools of ourselves.
The processor lied about Mastercard's involvement. It's par for the course in my experience that processors always try to offload blame on someone else. Then Mastercard saying explicitly that the decision wasn't made at their level.
I imagine you have had the same week of yelling at the wall on this issue I have.
> I imagine you have had the same week of yelling at the wall on this issue I have.
Does a multinational company worth half a trillion dollars really deserve your personal, emotional support? I think they’ll be just fine no matter how fervently you support or oppose them.
> But I already learned my lesson back during the Reddit Boston Marathon bullshit: the crowds are stupid. Don't trust the hype, don't trust Reddit Posts that cite other Reddit posts that cite a tweet. Wait for real info.
Reddit is a hotbed of misinformation, especially when tensions run high. I have been surprised by how frequently tech people develop a blind spot for Reddit’s low quality. I think it’s because Reddit feels like the internet from 10 years ago, especially if you use old.reddit.com .
It’s basically TikTok for text and thumbnails, though.
I fully agree with you with regard to Reddit misinformation. However, to the extent that a boycott on Mastercard and VISA would be successful, I believe it would have almost the same effect on Stripe and PayPal. If it's PayPal and Stripe that are actually responsible for this deeply unpopular policy, but Mastercard and VISA that are getting all the bad publicity, then Mastercard and VISA are not going to keep dealing with PayPal and Stripe!
These kinds of intermediaries can be very convenient for both the merchant and the consumer, but they are not essential for most users. Indeed most of the hurdles in the way of merchants accepting payment by card directly are artificially created by VISA and Mastercard themselves, so it's within their control to loosen the rules and sideline PayPal and Stripe.
I don't think it is yet. I set up a GBP payment with GoCardless last month, and it was fulfilled by a Direct Debit[1] mandate. It would be fantastic if GoCardless have already added support for Wero, but I suspect they are still using manual SEPA for Euro payments.
Germany, France and Belgium rolled out Wero I think. Haven't seen it accepted on a website yet though (I think it was meant to replace GiroPay). Netherlands will follow next year and wants to replace their ubiquitous iDEAL afaik.
Yes but people expect to get their digital goods immediately, not in 1-2 business days. SEPA Instant support is spotty and even if it wasn't, I don't think that the tooling around SEPA on the merchant side of things is built to handle transaction in real time the way people are used to with cards.
Supporting instant payments is now mandatory in the EU on the receiving side, and in a couple of weeks on the sending side. No surcharge allowed either, which usually means it's free.
Arent those instant nowadays ? Also if there was a reason those take some time or are not as convenient as car payment so far (not sure there are any such reasons) you could just fill your Steam wallet and then pay for individual games from that.
Even if the payment is instant, the processing on merchant's side typically isn't. If I place the order at 5 in the morning and pay with card, it's ~always shipped the same day. Conversely I've never had the order processed the same day when paying with SEPA.
I don't know where the bottleneck is, but I've personally never shopped anywhere that was set up to process SEPA payments rapidly.
yeah, this I don't get. Maybe the issue is that you don't want to implement SEPA yourself, so you go through a payment processor -- which may then have the same guidelines as MasterCard?
SEPA flows typically have a more rough UX, maybe this would put off a lot of customers?
They could also just piggy back off of SEPA and just do the bog standard thing of asking the customer to transfer x amount of money with the reference abcxyz. If the customer then uses instant transfer in their banking app, they get to immediately confirm the purchase.
In case of Steam they could totally also just give immediate access and then revoke it if the payment doesn't happen within 36 hours.
If you operate a payment processor, and are a part of a legal oligopoly, you should be punished for not processing legal transactions - even if people are using your services to buy icky things you don't approve of.
They are processors and yes some their own gateway.
Billing is broadly part of merchant services and is largely done by the sales organization that sold the processing.
Of course there are companies that encompass all these and more like the acquiring bank.
If you came to this by looking at epoch's website, click the tab from "Billing" to "Merchant Solutions". The rest very clearly state they are a processor.
Chase Bank is partnering with Coinbase, and is one of the largest commercial banks in the country. Now, I'm unsure what the UX is going to look like in my Chase iOS app vs Coinbase app, but that is a strong signal of directionality. If I can send money globally in a few clicks with Chase and TransferWise, I expect to be able to get fiat onto crypto rails (including stablecoins) pretty quick in a similar fashion soon. Chase already supports RTP and FedNow for domestic dollar instant payment rails, but if Coinbase maintains an account with them (any bank, really, who wants to support this), a book entry will do for immediate funds availability.
My mental model is "what is the least friction to get value from fiat stores to uncensored value transfer rails" on this topic.
> Beginning this fall, you’ll be able to use Chase credit cards to fund your Coinbase account. Beginning in 2026, you’ll be able to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to fund your Coinbase account. For the first time, points from a major credit card rewards program will be redeemable for crypto rewards. Beginning in 2026, you’ll be able to directly link your Chase account to Coinbase. Chase customers will be able to seamlessly link their bank accounts to Coinbase for another fast, easy way to buy crypto - in addition to all of our existing integrations.
(As of 2023, Chase had 18.5 million checking accounts. In 2024, Chase opened nearly 2 million net new checking accounts. In July 2025, it was reported that JPMorgan Chase holds the largest total deposits among US banks, totaling over $2T; not a JPMC fan by any means, but they are the Goliath of commercial banks as it stands)
Their processor, Chase Paymentech, doesn't accept businesses in adult industry. I doubt they will allow their infrastructure to handle crypto payments for it either.
It doesn't matter how decentralized it is when you have a centralized merchant account.
First, this product only funds one thing, an account at coinbase. You then have to transfer money to people from whom you would like to buy. No protection from fraud. No nothing. Second, even if it did the real time purchase from the vendor directly from Chase with all the attendant protections, (which it doesn't, but even if it did), we'd really need all banks and credit unions to be using it. If it's just Chase, it's going to be inconvenient for a sizable number of people.
I am willing to bet economically that there is a cohort of financial services customer who will waive fraud protections (Reg E and credit card chargebacks, broadly speaking) for access to make payments that would otherwise be censored. To be determined if we get there of course. I say this as someone who had to figure out payments for adult content decades ago for an adult content star, and was one of the earlier cohorts of ccbill payment processing customer. In my experience, if people want something, they will find a way to pay for it. As a financial services provider, your job (imho) is to enable customers to move the money where they want to. Cash, instant payments, ach, debit or credit cards, wires, stablecoins, it doesn't matter.
Chase hasn't been able to stop me from funding merchants they would otherwise not do business with once my funds get to Coinbase, for example. This is the value of stablecoins imho, the ability to move fiat in a low regulation manner through technical performance art. I'd mail cash if I had to, but I'd prefer the stablecoin rails when higher regulation instant payments aren't available to move value due to gating.
(day job is at a fintech, thoughts and opinions always my own)
Indeed all that would do is make Coinbase a largely unregulated clearing house for fiat transactions. Unless the transactions themselves are actually made on a cryptocurrency blockchain, I can't imagine what advantage Coinbase could have over several other financial companies who have a lot more experience in running clearing houses than Coinbase do.
Jesus no, paying with crypto because payment processors act like censors is correcting one wrong with another. It would artificially inflate crypto, which would be very suspicious, like putting tariffs on mature content.
It's not, because PayPal/Mastercard et al blacklists the company, not the products. If they decide they don't want to be associated with you, they won't be. They will block all transactions from you regardless on if the purchaser is buying porn or potatoes.
No, that's even worse. Now you're paying more money for a worse solution. Imagine A) the per sale loss and B) the amount of lost sales from non-porn-buying customers that rightfully don't want to do that.
The right solution is what they're doing - finding a sane payment processor to work with.
Edit for clarity:
Stripe came over to them and said "if you have NSFW stuff for sale, we will not process any of your payments." The majority of revenue for itch is SFW content. If they start selling them for gift cards or points or whatever, Stripe will cut their revenue to 0.
It makes no sense to rush development of an alternative stopgap measure that is worse financially for you than the status quo.
Everyone talking about crypto is forgetting that there are payment providers processing Visa and MC for adult content. The difference is that PayPal and Stripe (and others) aren't setup to process those kinds of transactions. Payments need to be coded properly. The issue wasn't that Visa/MC won't process adult content (they 100% will), but you can't sell adult content when you don't code it as adult content.
Finding a processor that specializes in that is what they should do. This will allow them to process adult content on those processors properly coded. Of course, those processors generally charge a higher amount because of the greater risk.
But none of this is new or crazy. It's decades old, and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone wanting to conduct business in the adult space online.
Correct transaction coding is required, sure, but I think you buried the lede a little. Processing transactions for adult content is very high risk because of the increased rate of chargebacks (from fraud) and the exposure to illegal activity (csam, trafficking). Stripe, PayPal etc. are very protective over their standing with card providers and regulators. Stripe could charge more to process these transactions (even enough to cover the increase in chargebacks) but the risk of processing illegal transactions isn’t worth it at any price.
100% agreed. I didn't bring that up because there is a LOT more I could say on the topic, but wanted to try and keep it a short and concise as possible.
But yes, reputation is also critical. Amongst many other things.
I've been under the impression that MC/Visa claimed this is 'illegal content'.
Seems like its more than just a coding issue, but an issue of payment processors acting as gatekeepers of what is allowed to be purchased.
Nah, you can purchase anything legal (and adult content is legal in many jurisdictions).
Problem is, different classes of goods and/or services have very different rates. Like, if you sell grocery it is 1%, if you sell computer games it is 2.5% and if your sell adult content it is 5% if you can see physical card (you are magazine stall with adult magazines) and 7% if you don't see card (on-line sell). Numbers are totally made up by me here, BTW, but principle is the same.
You see, Visa and MC are credit card system, so if transaction was done by stolen card (and probability of that event depends on the goods sold and type of point of sale) and it was charged back by proper card owner, it is Visa/MC who pays for troubles.
It is what why proper transaction coding is so enforced.
Many (a lot) of transactions are with effectively debit cards (overdraft limit is set to 0.0 by issuer bank), but technically any Visa (not Electron) and MC (not Maesto) card is credit one.
On the other hand, I didn't hear about successful charge backs for many years. Like, 20 years ago it was trivial with good European bank (one phone call, zero paper work — I seen this several times in person!), and now it is much harder.
And one more question: why do we need payment processors at all?! I don't need it to pay with my card, why do I need to accept payments? Why banks don't want to be payment processors directly for their clients? Why do we need these MitM?
How does the type of transaction help determine fraud?
Are you saying it's because these games weren't properly flagged as an 'adult' transaction? When I buy Call of Duty from GameStop, is it flagged as an 'adult' transaction?
Also, didnt MasterCard directly say they're enforcing their existing guidelines against "unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.” ? It doesnt seem like it's just a coding issue....
Type of transaction directly influences commission of the system, as high-risk transactions are linked with higher commission.
If you sell adult products you are subject to higher commissions. If you sell adult products and don't mark these transactions as adult products you evade higher commission.
I don't say I agree with this logic, and I think tat Visa and MC are f*cking bastards, but it is how it works now.
It's convenience. People have gotten used to MC/Visa.
Debit cards are just MC/Visa that comes straight out of your bank account.
A true alternative would need to tie into banks, work with the current payment systems seamlessly, and offer credit options with reasonable terms.
Basically, it would have to be either funded by billionaires as a revenge passion project on MC/Visa or established by a country like the US as a public infrastructure.
I don't speak about MC/Visa in my last sentence but about Stripe, PayPal and all this middle layer between me as entrepreneur and my bank account. Why should I use them and not my bank directly? Why does this business exist?
MC and Visa is inter-bank systems, I don't like what they do with policies, but I understand why they are needed to "link" all banks around the world together and allow any acquiring bank to get payment from card of any other issuing bank without direct link between them. It is understandable.
And I, as card holder, don't need any men-in-the-middle when I pay at brick-and-mortar shop: such shop has account in some other bank and has payment terminal from this bank, not from PayPal. Why does online shop need Stripe, PayPal or other men-in-the-middle?
Probably because dealing with MC/Visa directly is a PITA, and that is likely on purpose even though they have a stranglehold on non-cash in-store payment processing worldwide.
You're saying that all the video game retailers need to do is use the correct Merchant Category Code, but which one is that? A sexually explicit video game seems to match code 5816 ("Digital Goods: Games") exactly. There doesn't appear to even be a specific MCC for pornography that one could argue the game fits into.
> You're saying that all the video game retailers need to do is use the correct Merchant Category Code, but which one is that?
Apologies if that's what it sounds like. It's not. While ensuring you use the right code is part of it, it's also making sure that the bank/payment provider is also aware of what you are transacting. What code should you use for adult games? Don't ask someone online. You should talk to your bank/payment provider and make sure they understand what you are doing on that account and how it will properly be coded.
It's not just the code, but also the account and your relationship with the provider.
Keep in mind that often there are several categories something can fit into, and it's important to work with your provider to have a clear understanding of what they allow and are willing to process.
But the code for an adult game already exists, right? M rated games have existed for years...even X rated. How did gamestop sell me GTA? Is there not sex scenes and violence in the game?
Also, didnt MasterCard directly say they're enforcing their existing guidelines against "unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.” ? It doesnt seem like a coding issue....
Or in this case: itch.io switches to CCpay instead of Stripe as mentioned in the article. Because Stripe was actually the problem here, not Visa/Mastercard.
I still will highlight the closure of Manga Library Z (which Visa/Mastercard is to blame). But this itch.io problem was different.
There are more adult oriented payment processors but they usually charge much higher rates because that sector attracts way more "I totally didn't buy that honey it must be fraud, I'm contesting it" that costs them more and they get charged more by the big upstream processors like Visa and Mastercard. Plus you're still liable for their rules the same way itch's current processor is if you want to process their card transactions.
How so? Capitalism itself has created the visa/mastercard duopoly. Capitalism only leads primarily to monopolies and duopolies, hence the problem we're in.
Do you really think there's a shortage of people who would like to start a company that gets an easy 3% per transaction?
The issue isn't at Visa/MC, but the processor. That is why Itch is looking at other processors.
Also, that 3% doesn't go to just Visa/MC and the other card brands.
It goes to the payment gateway, the payment processor, at least one level of sales organization, the merchant bank, and the POS company in the case of in person business. There are several intermediaries that get a slice of the pie.
This whole payment processor as paid content censor system is absurd. Don't need payment processors looking over everyone's shoulder "oh man you shouldn't deal with them ... or buy that".
Local sword making company ran into getting blacklisted by processors. These guys are professionals and well known in their business, not some randos. But when it comes to payment processors everyone is small potatoes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They couldn't even find out why it happened. The amount of work they had to do to just get a clue on what was going on was incredible. It took in person visits and directed from bank to bank to bank to understand what happened. And as far as I know they still haven't found out the root cause. They managed to get some work around but who knows how long that will last.
These processors are not content curators / investigators and they're clearly not putting much effort into actually investigating or allowing anyone to dispute these things through a reasonable process.
There's no sense to these systems, you can just be cut off with no warning and the payment processors have no obligation to care or tell anyone anything.
I think this game censorship row, which apparently is expected to extend to violent games in general, taken with other past censorship by financial companies against Wikileaks, is evidence that finance in general is infrastructure. You can’t have a working democracy or freedom without these being available just like electricity or water are. We need heavy regulation or a public funded alternative, or the nationalization of the largest financial companies. For once, I will call and write my legislators about this topic.
>There's no sense to these systems, you can just be cut off with no warning and the payment processors have no obligation to care or tell anyone anything.
You can thank the Bank Secrecy Act as amended by the PATRIOT act for that. It basically deputized every licensed money transmitter to act as an extension of law enforcement through the imposition of KYC/AML requirements, which is accompanied by the tendency/incentive to de-risk the bank.
Crypto solves this problem.
No, it doesn't solve the actual problem which is both: a) "conveniently pay for whatever is legal" and b) "have some recourse if someone takes my money and doesn't send me anything".
You may argue that current payment processors do a poor job at b) but they do an infinitely better job than crypto since it's a division by zero situation.
It solves the actual problem of "it is literally impossible for me to pay for this digitally" with "it is possible, albeit somewhat inconvenient, to pay anyone digitally for anything".
> b) "have some recourse if someone takes my money and doesn't send me anything"
Your recourse is the legal system. Crypto isn't mutually exclusive with working with trusted, legally registered corporations whom you can sue.
In fact there are cases where crypto makes it impossible for you to accept my money unless you send me the thing I'm paying for atomically.
But those are limited to purchasing things where ownership is also meaningfully controlled by crypto.
I'm a lot of cases the charge back mechanism is totally broken on the large stores. Amazon is happy to just cancel your account if you try it .
Also crypto isn't Bitcoin. There are plenty of other options that are close to "tap to pay"
You are concerned that a vendor who failed to deliver a product you ordered might cancel your account if you place a chargeback on the order?
If that is a fear shared among the general population, shouldn't that be a clear anti-trust concern?
Is losing your Amazon account that big of a deal? Are there really no practical alternatives? Is this fear of displeasing Amazon rational? If so, how come I don't hear any bells going off in government regulators?
I am not the person you're replying to, but I am also concerned about this issue.
This is a concern for people who have a lot of digital content under Amazon's umbrella. I have hundreds of audiobooks, ebooks, music, and movies - and if I lose my Amazon account I lose access to hundreds if not thousands of dollars of content.
As for trying to constrain Amazon to play fair, and treat the peasants nicely? Good luck.
Amazon is a rival to Google in terms of content delivered to people, and, like Google, Amazon performs a lot of services for the federal government. They have lobbyists, legal teams, and even politicians in their pocket.
Your subjective experience, or a lack of interest from legislators, does not mean these issues do not exist.
Perhaps more accurately, crypto can solve this problem. Right now it's hard, but if you want a solid permanent solution to this problem, crypto's a better long term bet than "let's hope the banks become less prudish."
Does Crypto have a webhooks kind of thing? To make it scalable?
Say someone pays for something via crypto, do you have to manually confirm each time before giving them the product/service?
Hmm, it could? From a fundamental POV, all the technology can do is act as a public ledger, executing and confirming transfers of money from one "account" to another. There's a whole lot of stuff being experimentally built on blockchains, so what you're looking for is possible.
I will say -- "immutability" isn't necessarily the horror that people make it out to be. Which is to say, oh $500 gets transferred from A to B incorrectly. The fact that you literally can't "undo" that doesn't much matter -- you just transfer 500 from B to A on a 2nd transaction.
I am afraid history would repeat itself, where:
1. Some new or existing payment company helps merchants to transact in cryptocurrency, because it's difficult for the merchants to do it themselves.
2. This payment company now becomes the new target for attacks, and the only change is from fiat currency to cryptocurrency.
An obvious answer to #1 is for merchants to process cryptocurrencies themselves, but that implies that all the problems in dealing with fiat currency (fraud detection, accessibility, scalability, etc.) is somehow easier with cryptocurrency, and I am not sure that is the case.
I’m so tired of crypto bros. No it doesn’t. You can’t replace currency with a speculative asset. Maybe with a stable coin it’s possible, like USDC or USDT. Even then I’m skeptical because the ecosystem is garbage and security is ass.
And yet it doesn't seem to have much adoption as far as this solution goes, probably for reasons that everyone mentions elsewhere / crypto isn't used for these kinds of transactions at much scale.
>payment processors as paid content censor system is absurd
So you don't like it when payment processors blacklist sexual content. What about racist content? Are you fine with someone selling a game mod that for example replaces all people of color in a game with people of European ancestry using something like Stripe?
Yes? Why would that be Stripe's business? Should Stripe also restrict you from renting R-rated movies or buying condoms?
I think we're going to have to accept that "payment companies should not be global game censors" means that they shouldn't be global game censors.
It actually shocks me that anyone thinks that's supposed to be an obvious case for rejection of the concept, we've had similar for free for the longest time.
What are you talking about? Free what? Adult content? Racist mods?
All of the above, and more.
Being able to sell such stuff incentives higher quality, doesn't it? It takes a serious amount of work to dig through all of Baldurs Gate, for example.
If it is illegal, there are laws to handle the situation. Otherwise they should focus on enabling financial transactions.
My example includes none of that. It's clear this duopoly system doesn't work as far as content filtering. Nothing about being a payment processor makes them good at evaluating companies, the individual bits of content they provide, and being a gatekeeper.
I agree, I was just wondering.
Yes
If I offer to sell you a copy of Mein Kampf, should the dollar you try to hand me spawn a force field and prevent you from handing it to me?
That's kinda how it works in Germany and many other European countries. Thinking of RAC bands like Landser. Mein Kampf is now legal as long as it comes with a commentary. The game mod I've mentioned, not sure if it would go through. Depends on the details, I guess
If itch wants to become the store that overflows with racism they can go advertise on Rumble and become irrelevant.
But they wouldn't do that, they would moderate the content on their own site.
I trust itchio to decide for themselves what kinds of content they want to host - I don’t like seeing Stripe/Paypal try to blackmail them into censorship.
As I suspected, the problem seems to be Stripe and Paypal as this information comes out.
I kinda feel bad for the call centers and the legion of Reddit/Twitter users who were mislead by a few random meme protest .gif files. But I already learned my lesson back during the Reddit Boston Marathon bullshit: the crowds are stupid. Don't trust the hype, don't trust Reddit Posts that cite other Reddit posts that cite a tweet. Wait for real info.
That being said: Visa and MasterCard have been dicks in the past and somewhat deserve attention. I'm just a bit sad that this particular case is turning out to be more of a Stripe/Paypal issue instead as it means a lot of energy has been misdirected.
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I've still got my Discover card so that if the real call for action ever comes, I'm ready to move off Visa/Mastercard. But people need to seriously fact check their work before hyping an internet brigade next time.
As I suspected, the problem seems to be Stripe and Paypal as this information comes out.
I'm not convinced that VISA and Mastercard are totally hands off about content and that Stripe and Paypal are going against their wishes to enforce content restrictions completely on their own.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1mf7uei/steam_update...
And did you read that?
Mastercard never talked to Steam directly. That means all the discussion about Mastercard (from Steams point of view) is practically hearsay.
Meanwhile, we have itch.io being VERY clear here that it's Stripe that has a no-porn policy. That gives us a DIRECT cause. And Stripe ALSO admits that they don't allow porn on their payment network.
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Has Steam even said who their payment processor is yet?
> Has Steam even said who their payment processor is yet?
Steam definitely support PayPal in some areas, but their consumer terms and conditions don't disclose whether they use an intermediary for handling card payments.
The worst were the people saying to harass Itch despite Itch also being the victims. I even saw some of them, when corrected about where the actual problems stem from, just say that "companies are not your friend" line and get super mad at the people pointing them away from attacking Itch.
"When the shit hits the fan it doesn't distribute equally".
The payment processing system is so complex and opaque even people in the industry rarely understand anything outside their little corner of it.
People are going to be angry at the most visible parts of the ecosystem.
Itch is clearly making the effort and I suspect they will come through with a new processor ultimately. They surely have enough business that processors that handle adult industry will most certainly negotiate beyond their typical rates. Especially considering the nature of the bulk of their business isn't directly adult oriented.
Payment processing being opaque, heavy handed, and restrictive all started with the patriot act, and until it's gone payment processors can't be the dispassionate processors of transactions people expect.
It's very strange that porn is the thing rallying people to dismantle this nonsense.
Then why the weak sauce denial from Mastercard? They could have denied much more than they did, and had every incentive to do so, but chose not to rule out allowing anyone acting on their behalf enforcing rules that they wrote, and chose not to deny taking any action in response to social media campaigns they were certainly aware of and were explicitly named in. They offered no explanation as to why they had rules on their books that, according to their statement, they have no business enforcing.
If the crux of the issue is that everyone has arranged a system where nobody has to take responsibility for anything, none of what you’ve said absolves Mastercard (or Visa) of any guilt.
> Then why the weak sauce denial from Mastercard?
https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/...
> Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.
This seems like a rather strong refutation of the discussion.
+-----------
> If the crux of the issue is that everyone has arranged a system where nobody has to take responsibility for anything, none of what you’ve said absolves Mastercard (or Visa) of any guilt.
Stripe has literally been saying no porn on their network since the freaking start of this controversy with Itch.io.
It’s really not. They’re saying they didn’t do it themselves, but aren’t ruling out it being done by proxy, which is exactly what Valve are saying happened. Actually, it’s a triple weasel, since they also didn’t evaluate any games, they went off unverified 3rd party reports, and aren’t targeting ‘game creator’ sites, but game distribution sites. It could be a potential quadruple weasel, since they could have not ‘required’ any restrictions, but presented such onerous alternatives that it was a de-facto requirement that still fell short of the strictest definition of the word.
And yet there is still porn on Steam, so clearly this is more than just Stripe.
Steam is on the record that Mastercard literally never interacted with Steam on this entire controversy.
The entire discussion is between Steam and it's payment processors. And Steam, for whatever reason, hasn't publicly shamed (or discussed) who those payment processors are who were pushing these rules.
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For now, we can rest assured that Itch.io case is being well discussed. We see it is Stripe and Paypal for Itch.io and unless conflicting news comes out, I'll assume the same for Steam.
That is irrelevant. The payment processors are enforcing Mastercard’s rules, and explicitly state as much. Mastercard don’t need to ‘interact’ with anyone if they have intermediaries willing to do so on their behalf. Mastercard’s own rule 5.12.7 /is/ conflicting news. It states that they have sole discretion, so there is little chance of any partner invoking it against Mastercard’s wishes. Just in a non-interactive way that only ends up with a few turbulent priests getting put to the sword.
Then why can I buy porn with my MasterCard right now?
Answer: because the company I buy Porn from uses CCBill, not Stripe. You know, like what the article says Itch.io is looking into.
There are specific payment processors for pornography. This is accepted because everyone knows that Porn gets more chargebacks (Hubands often have to chargebacks and pretend they didn't buy porn when their Wives find the charge). So there's a large degree of customer fraud in pornographic purchases.
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Like Steam, Mastercard, Itch.io and even stripe themselves are pointing out: the problem is solidly the payment processor. Or Stripe in this specific Itch.io case.
Done. Now when another Manga / Doujin Library gets banned for too much porn on behest of MasterCard, that will be the time to complain. But for now, stand down. This issue is becoming a boy cried wolf like overreaction. Especially as the facts are finally coming in.
That’s moving the goalposts. The fact that Mastercard doesn’t even apply their own rules consistently is another, arguably even greater problem that you would probably be better off not mentioning. Stop deflecting and explain why Mastercard lied by omission by claiming they don’t do something that their own rules clearly state that they do. If you can’t do this, you’re not interested in the facts, you’re just whiteknighting for a poor defenseless international megacorporation with veto power over a huge portion of the world’s economy.
The campaigns have been consistent about labeling Stripe as a problem.
Well I'm sure the legion of underpaid Visa/Mastercard help desk operators feel cool about that. /s
Did Stripe even HAVE a call center for the internet mob to protest at?
They made it very difficult to reach a human being, but yes, they do have a call center.
I've been following this protest for a bit out of curiosity (because I really do think Visa/Mastercard is problematic).
But almost all the Reddit posts or Tweets I've seen are about Visa call centers or Mastercard call centers. The number of people protesting Stripe is miniscule in comparison (if there even is anyone to begin with).
> I kinda feel bad for the call centers and the legion of Reddit/Twitter users who were mislead by a few random meme protest .gif files
If you think it was just a few image memes, you really haven't been paying attention. Check out my post history here for better information than you currently have on how credit card companies are definitely contributing to this problem, if not a critical link in the chain that causes this problem.
Personally, I believe that the problem is upstream of credit card companies even. The problem is with activist investors with far too much influence, able to bully the CEOs of Visa/MasterCard/etc. to accomplish political outcomes.
> as it means a lot of energy has been misdirected.
Mastercard was involved* in the censorship of Steam games, according to Steam’s statement quoted here:
https://www.thegamer.com/steam-adult-game-ban-valve-says-mas...
So whence “energy has been misdirected”?
*: Yes, we can quibble about who was “actually responsible”, were the various intermediaries overzealous, etc., but it’s enough to note that in the counterfactual where Mastercard doesn’t have a rule 5.12.7, there is no censorship of Steam in this manner.
Or... the payment processor lied.
I guess we'll find out really quick if itch finds another processor.
I mean, I can buy porn right now with my MasterCard. Do I need to start posting links as proof?
We all know that the issue is with the categorization of the transaction. MasterCard/Visa has higher chargebacks and thus higher costs associated with porn. When Stripe focuses on non-porn they can get much cheaper pricing. When Itch.io buys cheaper fees from Itch.io, they get smacked due to some porn being on the payment network.
So now itch.io is realizing the 'price' of Porn and we will see if itch.io decides if it's worth the cost. Especially because CCBill or whatever is going to be a % higher on all transactions (including non-porn), it's likely that it's only efficient if itch.io makes a 2nd website for ONLY pornographic games or something.
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It's.... really messy and muddy. But messy / muddy situations don't make good little memes or call to action on Reddit/Twitter.
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I am still pretty sure that Visa/Mastercard are problematic. But if this is going to be a sustained push, people need to be much much smarter about the information and also need to direct their energy efficiently. You can't just call up the internet mob like the boy who cried wolf.
I think the message needs to be about the power and control of Visa/Mastercard and payment processors to cut off free speech in general. Porn could be a good starting point for free speech discussion and seems to come up as a practical example often. But we still need to get the details correct otherwise we risk making fools of ourselves.
I agree with you. I think you read that wrong.
The processor lied about Mastercard's involvement. It's par for the course in my experience that processors always try to offload blame on someone else. Then Mastercard saying explicitly that the decision wasn't made at their level.
I imagine you have had the same week of yelling at the wall on this issue I have.
Then Mastercard saying explicitly that the decision wasn't made at their level.
You put much more trust in these companies than I do.
> I imagine you have had the same week of yelling at the wall on this issue I have.
Does a multinational company worth half a trillion dollars really deserve your personal, emotional support? I think they’ll be just fine no matter how fervently you support or oppose them.
I have no love for mastercard, I just have a distaste for misinformation. I want to see the blame go where it is deserved, the processors.
You are clearly the one emotional about this.
> But I already learned my lesson back during the Reddit Boston Marathon bullshit: the crowds are stupid. Don't trust the hype, don't trust Reddit Posts that cite other Reddit posts that cite a tweet. Wait for real info.
Reddit is a hotbed of misinformation, especially when tensions run high. I have been surprised by how frequently tech people develop a blind spot for Reddit’s low quality. I think it’s because Reddit feels like the internet from 10 years ago, especially if you use old.reddit.com .
It’s basically TikTok for text and thumbnails, though.
It's because us old dogs have grown up where Wisdom of the Crowds was actually a hype concept and we still (mistakenly) believe in it.
It's hard for us to learn new tricks. The hope is in the next generation to figure this out...
I fully agree with you with regard to Reddit misinformation. However, to the extent that a boycott on Mastercard and VISA would be successful, I believe it would have almost the same effect on Stripe and PayPal. If it's PayPal and Stripe that are actually responsible for this deeply unpopular policy, but Mastercard and VISA that are getting all the bad publicity, then Mastercard and VISA are not going to keep dealing with PayPal and Stripe!
These kinds of intermediaries can be very convenient for both the merchant and the consumer, but they are not essential for most users. Indeed most of the hurdles in the way of merchants accepting payment by card directly are artificially created by VISA and Mastercard themselves, so it's within their control to loosen the rules and sideline PayPal and Stripe.
It seems weird to use stripe/paypal at that scale rather than having direct merchant accounts with the card issuers. Why would they do it that way?
At least in Europe they could offer payment by bank transfer, something like this: https://gocardless.com/solutions/instant-bank-pay/
Looks like the Wero payment system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) It's not provided by all banks yet, but it does work nicely.
I don't think it is yet. I set up a GBP payment with GoCardless last month, and it was fulfilled by a Direct Debit[1] mandate. It would be fantastic if GoCardless have already added support for Wero, but I suspect they are still using manual SEPA for Euro payments.
[1]: https://www.directdebit.co.uk/
Germany, France and Belgium rolled out Wero I think. Haven't seen it accepted on a website yet though (I think it was meant to replace GiroPay). Netherlands will follow next year and wants to replace their ubiquitous iDEAL afaik.
Couldn't they just take SEPA transfers to their account?
Yes but people expect to get their digital goods immediately, not in 1-2 business days. SEPA Instant support is spotty and even if it wasn't, I don't think that the tooling around SEPA on the merchant side of things is built to handle transaction in real time the way people are used to with cards.
Supporting instant payments is now mandatory in the EU on the receiving side, and in a couple of weeks on the sending side. No surcharge allowed either, which usually means it's free.
Arent those instant nowadays ? Also if there was a reason those take some time or are not as convenient as car payment so far (not sure there are any such reasons) you could just fill your Steam wallet and then pay for individual games from that.
Even if the payment is instant, the processing on merchant's side typically isn't. If I place the order at 5 in the morning and pay with card, it's ~always shipped the same day. Conversely I've never had the order processed the same day when paying with SEPA.
I don't know where the bottleneck is, but I've personally never shopped anywhere that was set up to process SEPA payments rapidly.
yeah, this I don't get. Maybe the issue is that you don't want to implement SEPA yourself, so you go through a payment processor -- which may then have the same guidelines as MasterCard?
SEPA flows typically have a more rough UX, maybe this would put off a lot of customers?
They could also just piggy back off of SEPA and just do the bog standard thing of asking the customer to transfer x amount of money with the reference abcxyz. If the customer then uses instant transfer in their banking app, they get to immediately confirm the purchase.
In case of Steam they could totally also just give immediate access and then revoke it if the payment doesn't happen within 36 hours.
If you operate a payment processor, and are a part of a legal oligopoly, you should be punished for not processing legal transactions - even if people are using your services to buy icky things you don't approve of.
We need to avoid parallel economies at all costs.
Like go to any porn paysite... MobiusPay, Segpay, CCBill, Epoch?
Those are billers, some with their own payment gateway.
eMerchantPay is one I've seen in the wild, also.
They are processors and yes some their own gateway.
Billing is broadly part of merchant services and is largely done by the sales organization that sold the processing.
Of course there are companies that encompass all these and more like the acquiring bank.
If you came to this by looking at epoch's website, click the tab from "Billing" to "Merchant Solutions". The rest very clearly state they are a processor.
Coinbase powered stablecoin? Any stablecoin provider really.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/16/coinbase-steps-into-consumer...
Needs to be seamless for people who haven't already bought into the crypto ecosystem and don't want to maintain a cash float there.
Chase Bank is partnering with Coinbase, and is one of the largest commercial banks in the country. Now, I'm unsure what the UX is going to look like in my Chase iOS app vs Coinbase app, but that is a strong signal of directionality. If I can send money globally in a few clicks with Chase and TransferWise, I expect to be able to get fiat onto crypto rails (including stablecoins) pretty quick in a similar fashion soon. Chase already supports RTP and FedNow for domestic dollar instant payment rails, but if Coinbase maintains an account with them (any bank, really, who wants to support this), a book entry will do for immediate funds availability.
My mental model is "what is the least friction to get value from fiat stores to uncensored value transfer rails" on this topic.
https://www.coinbase.com/blog/Coinbase-and-JPMorgan-Chase-jo...
> Beginning this fall, you’ll be able to use Chase credit cards to fund your Coinbase account. Beginning in 2026, you’ll be able to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to fund your Coinbase account. For the first time, points from a major credit card rewards program will be redeemable for crypto rewards. Beginning in 2026, you’ll be able to directly link your Chase account to Coinbase. Chase customers will be able to seamlessly link their bank accounts to Coinbase for another fast, easy way to buy crypto - in addition to all of our existing integrations.
(As of 2023, Chase had 18.5 million checking accounts. In 2024, Chase opened nearly 2 million net new checking accounts. In July 2025, it was reported that JPMorgan Chase holds the largest total deposits among US banks, totaling over $2T; not a JPMC fan by any means, but they are the Goliath of commercial banks as it stands)
Their processor, Chase Paymentech, doesn't accept businesses in adult industry. I doubt they will allow their infrastructure to handle crypto payments for it either.
It doesn't matter how decentralized it is when you have a centralized merchant account.
I think you're misinterpreting here..
First, this product only funds one thing, an account at coinbase. You then have to transfer money to people from whom you would like to buy. No protection from fraud. No nothing. Second, even if it did the real time purchase from the vendor directly from Chase with all the attendant protections, (which it doesn't, but even if it did), we'd really need all banks and credit unions to be using it. If it's just Chase, it's going to be inconvenient for a sizable number of people.
(By "sizable", I mean the majority.)
I am willing to bet economically that there is a cohort of financial services customer who will waive fraud protections (Reg E and credit card chargebacks, broadly speaking) for access to make payments that would otherwise be censored. To be determined if we get there of course. I say this as someone who had to figure out payments for adult content decades ago for an adult content star, and was one of the earlier cohorts of ccbill payment processing customer. In my experience, if people want something, they will find a way to pay for it. As a financial services provider, your job (imho) is to enable customers to move the money where they want to. Cash, instant payments, ach, debit or credit cards, wires, stablecoins, it doesn't matter.
Chase hasn't been able to stop me from funding merchants they would otherwise not do business with once my funds get to Coinbase, for example. This is the value of stablecoins imho, the ability to move fiat in a low regulation manner through technical performance art. I'd mail cash if I had to, but I'd prefer the stablecoin rails when higher regulation instant payments aren't available to move value due to gating.
(day job is at a fintech, thoughts and opinions always my own)
Indeed all that would do is make Coinbase a largely unregulated clearing house for fiat transactions. Unless the transactions themselves are actually made on a cryptocurrency blockchain, I can't imagine what advantage Coinbase could have over several other financial companies who have a lot more experience in running clearing houses than Coinbase do.
Coinbase has deplatformed a notorious forum, if I am not mistaken. It is not really to be trusted, either.
Jesus no, paying with crypto because payment processors act like censors is correcting one wrong with another. It would artificially inflate crypto, which would be very suspicious, like putting tariffs on mature content.
Related. Others?
Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783566 - Aug 2025 (565 comments)
Clarifying recent headlines on gaming content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44760843 - Aug 2025 (24 comments)
Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 - July 2025 (586 comments)
Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44685011 - July 2025 (890 comments)
Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44679406 - July 2025 (250 comments)
Games: No sex, please. we're credit card companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675697 - July 2025 (52 comments)
Itch.io: Update on NSFW Content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44667667 - July 2025 (323 comments)
Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new censorship rules - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44636369 - July 2025 (162 comments)
Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606184 - July 2025 (905 comments)
It seems like an easy way around this is to sell gift cards and only allow gift card payment for the adult content.
It's not, because PayPal/Mastercard et al blacklists the company, not the products. If they decide they don't want to be associated with you, they won't be. They will block all transactions from you regardless on if the purchaser is buying porn or potatoes.
The shortcut is to accept Amazon gift cards, which are a sort of black market currency already, but this is a lossy pain to launder out to real money.
No, that's even worse. Now you're paying more money for a worse solution. Imagine A) the per sale loss and B) the amount of lost sales from non-porn-buying customers that rightfully don't want to do that.
The right solution is what they're doing - finding a sane payment processor to work with.
Edit for clarity:
Stripe came over to them and said "if you have NSFW stuff for sale, we will not process any of your payments." The majority of revenue for itch is SFW content. If they start selling them for gift cards or points or whatever, Stripe will cut their revenue to 0.
It makes no sense to rush development of an alternative stopgap measure that is worse financially for you than the status quo.
Everyone talking about crypto is forgetting that there are payment providers processing Visa and MC for adult content. The difference is that PayPal and Stripe (and others) aren't setup to process those kinds of transactions. Payments need to be coded properly. The issue wasn't that Visa/MC won't process adult content (they 100% will), but you can't sell adult content when you don't code it as adult content.
Finding a processor that specializes in that is what they should do. This will allow them to process adult content on those processors properly coded. Of course, those processors generally charge a higher amount because of the greater risk.
But none of this is new or crazy. It's decades old, and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone wanting to conduct business in the adult space online.
Correct transaction coding is required, sure, but I think you buried the lede a little. Processing transactions for adult content is very high risk because of the increased rate of chargebacks (from fraud) and the exposure to illegal activity (csam, trafficking). Stripe, PayPal etc. are very protective over their standing with card providers and regulators. Stripe could charge more to process these transactions (even enough to cover the increase in chargebacks) but the risk of processing illegal transactions isn’t worth it at any price.
100% agreed. I didn't bring that up because there is a LOT more I could say on the topic, but wanted to try and keep it a short and concise as possible.
But yes, reputation is also critical. Amongst many other things.
I've been under the impression that MC/Visa claimed this is 'illegal content'. Seems like its more than just a coding issue, but an issue of payment processors acting as gatekeepers of what is allowed to be purchased.
Nah, you can purchase anything legal (and adult content is legal in many jurisdictions).
Problem is, different classes of goods and/or services have very different rates. Like, if you sell grocery it is 1%, if you sell computer games it is 2.5% and if your sell adult content it is 5% if you can see physical card (you are magazine stall with adult magazines) and 7% if you don't see card (on-line sell). Numbers are totally made up by me here, BTW, but principle is the same.
You see, Visa and MC are credit card system, so if transaction was done by stolen card (and probability of that event depends on the goods sold and type of point of sale) and it was charged back by proper card owner, it is Visa/MC who pays for troubles.
It is what why proper transaction coding is so enforced.
Many (a lot) of transactions are with effectively debit cards (overdraft limit is set to 0.0 by issuer bank), but technically any Visa (not Electron) and MC (not Maesto) card is credit one.
On the other hand, I didn't hear about successful charge backs for many years. Like, 20 years ago it was trivial with good European bank (one phone call, zero paper work — I seen this several times in person!), and now it is much harder.
And one more question: why do we need payment processors at all?! I don't need it to pay with my card, why do I need to accept payments? Why banks don't want to be payment processors directly for their clients? Why do we need these MitM?
How does the type of transaction help determine fraud?
Are you saying it's because these games weren't properly flagged as an 'adult' transaction? When I buy Call of Duty from GameStop, is it flagged as an 'adult' transaction?
Also, didnt MasterCard directly say they're enforcing their existing guidelines against "unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.” ? It doesnt seem like it's just a coding issue....
Type of transaction directly influences commission of the system, as high-risk transactions are linked with higher commission.
If you sell adult products you are subject to higher commissions. If you sell adult products and don't mark these transactions as adult products you evade higher commission.
I don't say I agree with this logic, and I think tat Visa and MC are f*cking bastards, but it is how it works now.
It's convenience. People have gotten used to MC/Visa.
Debit cards are just MC/Visa that comes straight out of your bank account.
A true alternative would need to tie into banks, work with the current payment systems seamlessly, and offer credit options with reasonable terms.
Basically, it would have to be either funded by billionaires as a revenge passion project on MC/Visa or established by a country like the US as a public infrastructure.
I don't speak about MC/Visa in my last sentence but about Stripe, PayPal and all this middle layer between me as entrepreneur and my bank account. Why should I use them and not my bank directly? Why does this business exist?
MC and Visa is inter-bank systems, I don't like what they do with policies, but I understand why they are needed to "link" all banks around the world together and allow any acquiring bank to get payment from card of any other issuing bank without direct link between them. It is understandable.
And I, as card holder, don't need any men-in-the-middle when I pay at brick-and-mortar shop: such shop has account in some other bank and has payment terminal from this bank, not from PayPal. Why does online shop need Stripe, PayPal or other men-in-the-middle?
Probably because dealing with MC/Visa directly is a PITA, and that is likely on purpose even though they have a stranglehold on non-cash in-store payment processing worldwide.
Every payment processor went through some version of this: https://kindgeek.com/blog/post/what-is-a-payment-processor-a...
The convenience fee of not having to deal with that as a business owner seems worth it to me.
You're saying that all the video game retailers need to do is use the correct Merchant Category Code, but which one is that? A sexually explicit video game seems to match code 5816 ("Digital Goods: Games") exactly. There doesn't appear to even be a specific MCC for pornography that one could argue the game fits into.
> You're saying that all the video game retailers need to do is use the correct Merchant Category Code, but which one is that?
Apologies if that's what it sounds like. It's not. While ensuring you use the right code is part of it, it's also making sure that the bank/payment provider is also aware of what you are transacting. What code should you use for adult games? Don't ask someone online. You should talk to your bank/payment provider and make sure they understand what you are doing on that account and how it will properly be coded.
It's not just the code, but also the account and your relationship with the provider.
Keep in mind that often there are several categories something can fit into, and it's important to work with your provider to have a clear understanding of what they allow and are willing to process.
But the code for an adult game already exists, right? M rated games have existed for years...even X rated. How did gamestop sell me GTA? Is there not sex scenes and violence in the game?
Also, didnt MasterCard directly say they're enforcing their existing guidelines against "unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.” ? It doesnt seem like a coding issue....
I'm not usually one to go full market capitalist, but there is definitely a market solution to this one. I'm glad they are exploring the options.
I wish there was actually a healthy market with options and competition, there isn't.
Epoch, CCBill, TickleCharge, many others... just search for "card processors that work with adult industry".
Why "definitely"? Visa/MasterCard have a total duopoly. How is a "market solution" going to get around that?
Use a Discover card or AmEx.
Or in this case: itch.io switches to CCpay instead of Stripe as mentioned in the article. Because Stripe was actually the problem here, not Visa/Mastercard.
I still will highlight the closure of Manga Library Z (which Visa/Mastercard is to blame). But this itch.io problem was different.
Because the issue isn't with Visa/MC but with the processors. They are looking at alternative processors that work with adult material.
No, the root issue is with Visa/MC. It's passed on indirectly via payment processors.
There are more adult oriented payment processors but they usually charge much higher rates because that sector attracts way more "I totally didn't buy that honey it must be fraud, I'm contesting it" that costs them more and they get charged more by the big upstream processors like Visa and Mastercard. Plus you're still liable for their rules the same way itch's current processor is if you want to process their card transactions.
> there is definitely a market solution to this one
This would only be true if it was possible—as in, actually realistic and doable—for anyone to enter the market.
How so? Capitalism itself has created the visa/mastercard duopoly. Capitalism only leads primarily to monopolies and duopolies, hence the problem we're in.
Do you really think there's a shortage of people who would like to start a company that gets an easy 3% per transaction?
The issue isn't at Visa/MC, but the processor. That is why Itch is looking at other processors.
Also, that 3% doesn't go to just Visa/MC and the other card brands.
It goes to the payment gateway, the payment processor, at least one level of sales organization, the merchant bank, and the POS company in the case of in person business. There are several intermediaries that get a slice of the pie.
Now crypto currencies don't look that crazy.
Naw they look crazy, the crypto market is no less crazy.
Other things look crazy too.