Question for billing companies about escort advertising

[Simon]

I'm consulting on the development of a new website that will be a directory of escorts and escort agencies throughout the United States. The site will provide free information and be monetized with paid advertising from agencies and independent escorts, which will appear on the pages of the site. The ads will be tasteful and the text and photo(s) for each ad will have to be individually pre-approved by management before appearing on the site.

There will be absolutely no hardcore content or anything pornographic/obscene about the content on this site. Nothing that violates any laws will be allowed anywhere on the site or in any advertising, neither in words or images.

My question is whether the charges for advertising space would be considered adult/high-risk and therefore incur higher processing fees (and the $750 Visa registration fee), or if these transactions can be processed at the lower rates available to all the mainstream websites which sell ad space.

I put "billing companies" in the thread title, but would welcome accurate feedback from others who know about this too.

Thanks in advance.

[Simon]

Good Thursday morning greetings to all ... still looking for a billing company or someone with experience in this area to weigh in here.

[Axzar]

Yes, It will be assigned as a high risk account.

[CCBill Paul]

In your example, if there is nudity/adult material on the site it will be considered high risk. Feel free to hit me up, I would be happy to discuss further with you.

[Simon]

Axzar - thanks for the reply. I thought that would be the case, but wanted to get some feedback to be sure I'm not missing something that would allow this to be processed as a lower risk account since it's only ad sales.

Paul - thanks for jumping in too. Actually I spoke with someone at CCBill before I posted here since you're always my first choice. We used you for our paysites and affiliate program in the past and were always happy with your services. This time I'm not sure it's the right fit though, in part because of the $99.99 upper limit per charge since some of our advertising packages will have higher prices than that. I understand that limit may be raised with approval so we may still be able to do something with you if that's the case.

Anyone else still welcome to comment on this. We're just getting started so I'd like to collect all the information I can before we get to the decision points.

Thanks again!

[sperbonzo]

Because of the business model it would be deemed "high risk", however the rates shouldn't be very high, since you are selling advertising, not memberships. If the credit and personal financials of the principals are in order, you should be able to get a merchant account, even though it's a start up. Let me know if you have any questions.



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