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Originally Posted by iopyyt
Spent the last couple of years building an adult subscription site from scratch. Custom platform, recurring billing model, the whole thing.
The hardest part isn't development. It's finding a payment processor that won't shut you down.
We were using Stripe. It worked fine for a while. Then one day they banned us with no warning and held our funds. That's when you realize: conventional gateways aren't safe for an adult business. You can't build anything on top of them — at any moment they can decide to censor you and take your money.
We barely get chargebacks. The problem isn't risk — it's censorship.
Crypto is often suggested as an alternative, but it kills conversion. No recurring billing, and most people don't understand it or can't be bothered. Credit cards are still what works, but finding a bank that will process for adult is nearly impossible.
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Stripe's Terms of Service link is
https://stripe.com/en-ca/legal/restricted-businesses and it tells you what you can and cannot use their services for. This includes:
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Adult content and services (see the FAQs for additional details)
Adult services, including prostitution, escorts, pay-per-view, sexual massages, fetish services, mail-order brides and adult live-chat features
Adult video stores
Gentleman's clubs, topless bars and strip clubs
Pornography and other mature audience content (including literature, imagery and other media) designed for the purpose of sexual gratification
Any artificial-intelligence generated content that meets the above criteria
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Next, saying "chargebacks are few" doesn't really say anything. Most payment processors have a 1% cap on chargebacks. Idealy, you should never have chargebacks. It's always a good idea to invest some time to talking to customers to find out why they are upset, then offering them a refund - this is much better for you as a merchant.
Complaining about payment processors is always the wrong approach. What you want to do is to consider your payment processor as your business partner and not as any kind of pain in the ass that you have to deal with.
A good payment processor will work with you to make sure your site is compliant with all MC/Visa Rules, and help you to grow your business. The more money they can make with you, the more interested they will be to help you to grow your business, which is always what you want in a good business partner.
Do this: Go to all the usual payment processors for adult content: CCBill, Segpay, Netbilling, Mobiuspay, Epoch, etc. See my payment processor comparision at
https://2much.net/payment-processors/comparison.php. READ THEIR TOS. Reach out to their reps and ask your questions. If your ideal processor is a little pricey, ask if they can be flexible to help get you started. Don't fuck around with them - be completely honest when you describe your site and content. Do exactly what they say when it comes to content moderation, policies, 2257, etc and you'll be good to go.
Good luck!