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Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

kotaku.com

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Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#191

Post by Scaled »

numpad0 wrote: post #101
codedokode wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that is fair point, but cannot they just increase the commission to cover them? Also I think it is weird that when someone steals a bank card, they use it to buy adult games instead of buying an iPhone or MacBook and shipping it to the third world country.

I see random offhand unsubstantiated online comments here and there including here on HN, that 1) chargeback rates of porn, games, and digital contents are significantly lower than anything else, and 2) credit card companies already charge higher fees for porn despite that. Combined with prevalence of the suspiciously well standardized "because porn users and gamers chargeback Steam purchases way too often" canned re…

I've seen the chargeback rates, they are low. Consider that most adult consumers are repeat purchasers (subscribing to their favorite artist/dev/performer). They do not want to get banned for a chargeback and lose out on content! Most adult content creators also have friendly voluntary refund policy when requested. So chargeback rates are very low in adult.

Meanwhile other industries like travel have crazy high chargeback rates. This is because it is notorious for a no refund policy / locking customers into purchases months in advance... and then people just chargeback instead of accepting a consumer hostile no refund policy. So travel ends up having high chargebacks... and yet has minimal trouble getting processing.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#193

Post by mrguyorama »

Pay08 wrote: post #38
pavel_lishin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was more expensive to process, why wouldn't they pass those costs on?

The increased costs are from the increased rate of chargebacks.

Chargebacks don't cost a payment network anything.

They keep the payment fee, and they charge you a large chargeback fee. They don't lose or spend any money out of their own pocket on it.

If you have high fraud rates, they charge you a higher per payment fee.

Our company is both a payment network and a merchant, depending on specific product lines and such. We spend a lot of time preventing credit card fraud on our merchant lines of business, and very little on our payment line of business, because chargebacks cost us nothing there.

As designed.

I can't believe people keep perpetuating this lie, that they very obviously haven't thought critically about. It's so frustrating. It's like everyone just repeating gormlessly that the sky is actually purple when they can just look at it.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#194

Post by chromacity »

The usual explanation in these threads are "chargebacks", but come on. Payment processors could deal with chargebacks and disputes just fine. They suck for the seller, not the credit card company.

What US companies are afraid of more is PR and regulatory risk. Zelle has no chargeback process, but still bans the sale of automatic knives, fireworks, ammo, and firearm parts. Venmo bans a nebulous category of "products that present a risk to consumer safety". You better not be buying any vintage lawn darts for your collection.

The chargeback rate on knives or firearm optics is probably not any higher than on anything else. What's higher is the likelihood of a headline along the lines of "kid dead / injured because of Paypal". And so, we end up with digital payment processors as the arbiters of morality.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#195

Post by Scaled »

Aurornis wrote: post #49
schnebbau wrote: post #3

So who is pressuring the processors?

Stripe (their payment process) will service adult content sites. It's not actually banned, but if your business is involved in categories with high chargeback rates (travel, gambling, cryptocurrency, vaping, adult content) you have to pay higher fees to account for the higher fraud rate in those categories https://stripe.com/ie/resources/more/high-risk-merchant-acco...

I applied to stripe recentlyish as an adult game project with excellent processing history and very low chargeback rate and got denied.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#196

Post by marcosdumay »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #149
marcosdumay wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can make laws and people are subject to those laws, then they are government. I only disagree with the "the" on the GP, they are para-governamental.

it's not a law though, it's a choice of who to do business with

Eh... Go read the article again, or just the title.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#197

Post by criddell »

Scaled wrote: post #181
Aurornis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe (their payment process) will handle adult content payments. It puts the account into the high risk category due to the high rate of fraud in those categories. There's no actual evidence in the article that payment processors made them do it. They actually banned pornography long before this. They just updated the terms to clarify what counted as pornography. > Also this is why we should work to increase circul…

Just FYI, the high rate of fraud is FUD. I am in the field, have a very good chargeback rate, and still cannot secure card processing at fair terms. The processors I have spoken to know chargeback rates are low, but it's a rigged system designed to extract maximal revenue by middlemen.

That's like a 16 year old saying the auto insurance game is rigged because they are a very good driver but can't get cheap insurance.

Maybe your rates are high because of the risk pool you are in.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#198

Post by miki123211 »

interactivecode wrote: post #176
bell-cot wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelle is (in effect) a wire transfer - there is no "credit" (meaning "borrow now, pay later") for that law to apply.

In the US can you use stripe with only online bank transfers just like in the EU?

The US doesn't really do bank transfers the way we do here.

There's CashApp / Venmo / Zelle, previously Paypal, for P2P transfers (paying your friend for a half of the pizza you both just ate), but that's largely an internet phenomenon. There are wire transfers, but those are expensive and largely for big-ticket items you don't buy that often, think cars or houses, not TVs. There are ACH transfers, which is how wages and bills often work. The fun part of ACH is that the person executing the transfer doesn't have to be the account owner, so businesses can just transfer bill payments from your account to theirs. And then there are the famous checks, which work when no other option is available.

Non-purchase person-to-business transaction are largely done via credit card, sometimes by check or ACH. Explicitly instructing your bank to send a transfer to an account number provided by the business, either through a form or through a "quick transfer" UI, is very rare on that side of the pond.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#199

Post by btown »

epolanski wrote: post #187
btown wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual answer: hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bswuu1nfc040h... & https://finance.yahoo.com/news/visa-suspends-payments-for-ad... > But he was friendly with Mastercard’s then-CEO Ajay Banga, whom he had met through a mutual friend. Ackman texted Banga, providing a link to Kristof’s story with his tweet: “Amex, VISA and MasterCard should immediately withhold payments…

There isn't a single anti semitic comment in your replies, mind to link it?

The reply has been flagged/marked dead by HN since, and should at minimum auto-collapse (thus hiding even worse replies to it) regardless of your account's "showdead" settings. I'm not going to link to it, and it's not worth reading regardless.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#200

Post by bcrosby95 »

iamnothere wrote: post #126
coldacid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way governments these days use corporations and NGOs to work around constitutional restrictions, I'm sure they're pretty happy leaving the payment processors as-is.

They actually just got slapped for doing this. This was in the area of speech but hopefully it’s the start of a larger trend. https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/us-government-concede...

Lol, let me know when a federal administration admits wrongdoing against speech it dislikes. In the meantime this is no different than one side saying "we tax the rich too much" and the other side saying "we don't tax the rich enough."
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