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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

#251

Post by 9x39 »

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.

>Adult chargebacks consistently exceed the 1% threshold that triggers Visa and Mastercard monitoring programs, with secondary industry reporting placing the average annual rate in the 3% to 4% range

>How is an adult chargeback ratio calculated?

Divide the number of chargebacks in a month by the total transactions in the same month. The result is the chargeback ratio. Visa and Mastercard both use this formula, with Visa weighting dispute count and dollar volume together under VAMP.

https://sensapay.com/resources/blog/adult-industry-chargebac...

It seems like that sector has 3-4X the disputes and maybe even fraud, independent of your own business practices or success.

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

#252

Post by 9x39 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #237

"Forced to ban adult content by payment processors" If you go through and click all the links and hunt down the source, the final source underlying it all is a comic author who says, without quoting anything, or any proof, that that's the reason why. Just a random guy saying that Stripe made them ban it, without any evidence. I'm the King of England. There, I guess I "am" the King of England, because all it takes is…

The details sure are light, but it tracks with how banks and processors work. There's lots of indirect language and polite pressure involved, and famously, opaqueness behind decisions.

Consider this excellent article on debanking by an author who works at Stripe: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...

The machine grinds on regardless if we agree with it or not.

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

#254

Post by codedokode »

VerifiedReports wrote: post #229
tptacek wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. It's struggling on the front page because this is a very old story and it's the same conversation every time: payment processors hate this stuff because digital goods are fraud and chargeback magnets, and that's doubly true of adult content.

If U.S. credit-card issuers were worried about fraud, they would have implemented the other half of "chip-&-PIN," which the rest of the world has been using for decades. U.S. customers pretty much JUST got chips in our cards... but issuers "forgot" to implement the PIN part. Zero sympathy for this scumbag monopoly.

In my country you usually need to confirm payments with SMS OTP, except for trusted merchants (but they take the risk of fraud by opting out from confirmation). So simply stealing a bank card doesn't get you far. And pretending that you did not pay is also more difficult. Is US different? Do banks and clients trust each other in US and do not require OTP?

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

#255

Post by codedokode »

seanhunter wrote: post #160
Asraelite wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can use your imagination to come up with many reasons these result in more chargebacks than normal purchases. No I can't. Can you elaborate?

The canonical example is person A buys some risque item, their partner sees the credit card statement says "what is this?", so then person A denies they made the purchase (because they are embarrassed), says it must be fraud, so then it gets charged back on the credit card.

They do not have SMS OTP confirmation for bank card purchases? It is much more difficult to deny anything when there is a record of delivered SMS message along with phone identifier and precise location.

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

#256

Post by qingcharles »

mountainriver wrote: post #7
schnebbau wrote: post #3

So who is pressuring the processors?

I’ve heard this is apparently less about morality and more about payments getting contested by men getting caught by their spouses

I've worked in this space. I feel like the statistics about chargebacks are thrown around because they sound like they could be real.

The real chargeback rate is actually incredibly low. Probably way less than Amazon or anyone selling physical objects.

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

#257

Post by nerdsniper »

umbra07 wrote: post #214
nerdsniper wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective Shout is a Christian anti-rights organization wrapped in feminist cloth. The founder of Collective Shout previously successfully lobbied against mifepristone and opposed changes to legislation requiring pro-life pregnancy-counseling services to disclose their affiliations in their advertising. In 2004, she founded the anti-abortion lobby Women's Forum Australia.

Why are you jumping from "anti-abortion" to "Christian"?

Collective Shout's primary PR release platform is "Eternity News", self-described as:

> Published by Bible Society Australia, Eternity is a national media platform for Christians, designed to encourage, equip and inspire them by revealing what God is doing in our nation and beyond.

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

#258

Post by qingcharles »

chimeracoder wrote: post #69
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks frequently refuse to do business with, or heavily restrict, businesses that they deem risky from a financial perspective. Adult content, pharmaceuticals and travel are all industries that experience significantly higher occurrence of fraud and chargebacks than others. For example, your spouse sees a weird item on your credit card for a porn site. "Wasn't me! Must be stolen I'll report it." Sometimes it's the ot…

> Adult content, pharmaceuticals and travel are all industries that experience significantly higher occurrence of fraud and chargebacks than others. For example, your spouse sees a weird item on your credit card for a porn site. "Wasn't me! Must be stolen I'll report it." Sometimes it's the other direction. No, it has nothing to do with chargebacks. It's not even presented that way in their policies when they ban it.…

I had an opportunity to see the real chargeback data for this type of content and it is not high. It's low. If any bank says they are refusing service because of chargebacks they are lying and using that as an excuse to cover some other reason.

I also remember a story from someone I worked with in the 90s. At that time there were adverts in the back of newspapers for VHS tapes, very cheap. It would say "Get these 8 HOT VHS tapes for $4.99 inc shipping." People would call up and order on their credit card. The reality was the company would only send out a handful of these packages and then claim to be out-of-stock, then they would mail a refund check out to everyone else. The check would be from BIG TITTY BUSTY WHORES LLC or something. Literally nobody would cash the check.

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

#260

Post by tt24 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #230
tt24 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because a billionaire donated to this pac that means “billionaires” as a group are responsible for this? That’s like saying black people are responsible for electing Trump because >= 1 black person voted for him.

Your ignorance continues. Some of the billionaires fund it via intermediary organizations like Heritage Foundation. They are quite organized and not only acting as individuals.

How are they organized? Are you implying that all billionaires are in agreement to fund the heritage foundation? Lol
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