Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 305 posts

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#91

Post by netsharc »

capableweb wrote: post #67
techsin101 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

loading across multiple providers won't alter the chargeback ratio so what is the point?

You could (in theory) do some risk analysis and put the ones with the highest risk into the providers where you had the lowest chargeback. Wouldn't be 100% solution, but could get you there.

I wonder if they do do that. In Germany there's a credit rating agency that more or less has a monopoly, and everyone has more or less a profile with data supplied by companies who've dealt with them commercially (e.g. if you signed a phone contract or opened a bank account). But sometimes their algorithm would also try to predict the chances of people not paying bills by things like the ZIP code where they live...

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#92

Post by Rapzid »

capableweb wrote: post #66
mrdumas wrote: post #56

Since, I know a friend in this industry, let me explain what's going on here. Yes, OnlyFans uses Stripe, but that's not the entire story. In the adult/porn world, there's a high amount of chargebacks and fraud relative to low-risk industries like SaaS software. If you pass a certain chargeback threshold in the adult industry, your account is terminated, and no payment processor will do business with you. To reduce th…

Thanks a lot for the reply here. So Stripe manually checks the websites and sees exactly what they are being used for, as long as Stripe itself is not being used for the adult stuff, it's fine, and you can use other providers for the adult content? Still sounds like OnlyFans has some custom agreement with Stripe and a small player would get banned from using Stripe as soon as they see nudity on the site.

That sounds pretty reasonable; Stripe must be in a trusting arrangement with OnlyFans to do the right thing there.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#93

Post by wil421 »

saagarjha wrote: post #74
soylentcola wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did something surprisingly similar once as stupid kids/teens and it was in the days before CVV. Just touch tone to enter a card number (although we did this little experiment from a payphone using a 1-800 (toll free) sex line). Typically, you entered a card number after some initial "pitch". AFAIK, 1-900 numbers only worked by billing you on your phone bill.

Guess I'm showing my youth, because I've never seen a credit card be used without a CVV. And I think that's a poor security model…

It was at the end of the 90s maybe 2000. Messing with pay phones or prank calling on one was another fun thing to do. The good numbers (1-900) didn’t work on pay phones. ;-)

Call collect!

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#94

Post by [deleted] »

nasalgoat wrote: post #82
vehementi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still does not affect the ratio

The individual processors are the ones who care about chargebacks, not VISA itself. So by spreading the processing among several of them, the number of chargebacks per processor are lower. It's load balancing.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#95

Post by pen2l »

sk5t wrote: post #85
vehementi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still does not affect the ratio

Maybe the confounding factor here is that the term "load balance" could be extremely unsuitable for onlyfans' processing logic; e.g. they might preferentially route the risky transactions to one or two processors that won't get too agitated/punitive.

How is any given transaction distinguished as being risky or non-risky?

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#96

Post by adrianmonk »

justinholmes wrote: post #71
pottertheotter wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a web developer but I always assumed that happened on the backend, so it wouldn't be visible. I guess not?

Most websites can't/shouldn't store the card number, they embed Stripe JavaScript that sends card number to Stripe and get a token id to use on the backend later on. Can't store CCV or number without passing PCI compliance.

Interesting. Do they literally embed Stripe JS? I'm not a front end developer and don't know a ton about web security, but it seems like a malicious/hacked site could still get the card number this way.

The purpose of PCI compliance is to protect the number/info, so how would Stripe (and similar) get approved if they're creating a payment widget that allows third parties to snoop card numbers?

Is this a PCI loophole, or is there some technical barrier preventing the third-party site from getting access?

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#97

Post by lovegoblin »

__ryan__ wrote: post #9

Onlyfans is a platform for content subscriptions. It just happens to be a popular platform for adult content. Also, it surely makes them a ton of money.

You can say this about literally anything: Pornhub is just a platform for VOD. It just happens to be a popular platform for adult content.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#98

Post by fooey »

techsin101 wrote: post #65
mrdumas wrote: post #56

Since, I know a friend in this industry, let me explain what's going on here. Yes, OnlyFans uses Stripe, but that's not the entire story. In the adult/porn world, there's a high amount of chargebacks and fraud relative to low-risk industries like SaaS software. If you pass a certain chargeback threshold in the adult industry, your account is terminated, and no payment processor will do business with you. To reduce th…

loading across multiple providers won't alter the chargeback ratio so what is the point?

Chargeback ratio's are per account, but also have a minimum absolute threshold. So it's say, 2% chargeback AND at least 200 chargebacks before penalties kick in.

In a past life I worked for a place who had a few hundred processing accounts to load balance it all out because their chargeback rates were way too high. If an account gets close, you just don't use it for a month, or you throw a bunch of "safe" recurring charges at it to dilute it, or you hold a batch and send them through right before the rollover. Lots of ways to play number games.

Most of the execs did go to prison though, so don't take this as advice, but to be fair, the processors are the ones who told them to use those tactics.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#99

Post by djellybeans »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #84
everybodyknows wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weeks before Radvinsky purchased the OnlyFans holding company in the United Kingdom, he received a $250,000 tax credit from the state of Illinois. “The purpose of the Angel Investment Tax Credit Program is to attract and encourage the placement of investment dollars into early-stage, innovative companies throughout Illinois.” Your tax dollars at work.

You know what a credit is?

It only takes the word "tax" to make many people internally scream. Crude heuristics, but hey it's human programming.

Re: Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

#100

Post by mobilemidget »

mrdumas wrote: post #56

Since, I know a friend in this industry, let me explain what's going on here. Yes, OnlyFans uses Stripe, but that's not the entire story. In the adult/porn world, there's a high amount of chargebacks and fraud relative to low-risk industries like SaaS software. If you pass a certain chargeback threshold in the adult industry, your account is terminated, and no payment processor will do business with you. To reduce th…

Stripe merchants are not audited by G2 LLC for MasterCard? (*edit, maybe not with all banks I think of after 'submit')

https://www.g2llc.com/solutions/monitoring-solutions/merchan...

In EU they do, and if a string, or image on the site is not 'okay', you get denied for processing. And that's website wide, not just a single page. So in that line, I don't understand how stripe does this 'on the radar'.

Post reply on HN