Platforms and Credit Cards

Ok, here’s how it works.

Platforms set up and, generally, want to let you sell everything you possibly can.

The Credit Card processors say “hang on, not this, and this, and you can’t use these words” and the Platform has to comply. Because the “Or what?”, is “No Credit Card sales”.

So the sellers have to comply.

More recently it’s also been, “and now we’re going to mandate the following paperwork” and again, compliance is enforced.

Now this is contractual, not legal. Because it’s contractual, it can’t AFAIK be challenged. Because you have no god given right to be able to sell by credit cards.

BUT, there could be GDPR breaches between you and your fellow performers if you supply old paperwork as a block, as C4S seemed to want, but they seem to have moved to an “you warrant correct, and we randomly audit” approach, which is a lot less legally, hmm.

You’ll notice that the CC rules keep changing.

This is down to political and media pressure, and it’s the world we’re in. The end goal of the pressure groups is to stop CC being used for adult at all.

If you sell on platforms, keep up to speed with changes, or expect suspensions and terminations.

Selling via your own site, and avoiding Credit Cards, you can sell whatever legal stuff you want, but, obviously, only with customers who appreciate you and are willing to do the extra bit of work, (e.g. to buy crypto).

The other elephant

Over time, the platforms are building up huge databases of people’s ID’s, addresses etc – everyone who is in any scene. There will be a hack and massive doxxing. The lawsuits could sink that platform and cause the rest to close up shop and walk away with their profits to date.