Banking Issues Facing Adult Business Owners
It’s not surprising that the adult entertainment sector is viewed with suspicion. Owners of businesses in this sector are subject to increased scrutiny from the government and the public, just like any sex-based business. Our line of business entails having sexual relations.
It’s common for outsiders to view this line of work as forbidden and to assume that it’s nothing more than prostitution or the illegal sex trade. Contrary to popular belief, there is very little illegal activity involved because the adult entertainment sector is rigorously regulated by the US Department of Justice.
However, when it comes to the accessible banking resources required for adult industry businesses, financial discrimination is a very real problem. With more than 20 years of experience in the adult sector, Adult Business Consulting has overcome a wide range of obstacles. We have also experienced this form of discrimination. But given the institutional strength of numerous big banks and financial organizations around the world, the difficulties we’re addressing in this blog post are some of the most contentious and difficult to overcome. The Adult Business Consulting team addresses financial discrimination against business owners in the adult entertainment sector in this blog post, along with advice on how to handle it.
Financial Discrimination: What Is It?
Financial prejudice is a very serious problem. Financial discrimination is a phenomenon when banks and financial organizations purposefully or unintentionally refuse to offer financial and banking goods to categories of individuals, independent of economic restrictions on the sorts of jobs that people can engage in.
Racism, ethnicity, religion, low income, employment position, industry of labor, and the source of income transferred into a bank account are all bases for this discrimination. Banks may take a variety of actions, from as basic as shutting accounts without warning and withholding cash from the account holder to as extreme as reporting bank accounts to law enforcement for what is believed to be illegal conduct.
If their financial institution suspects that there is unlawful behavior occurring or if the checking or savings account is being used for sex-based work, many professionals in the adult industry face some type of financial discrimination. Most American financial institutions forbid its customers from using their accounts for sex-based work. Therefore, if you are an adult industry business, there are several barriers to using dependable financial services.
Financial Censorship: What Is It?
The adult entertainment sector also must deal with financial censorship. Financial censorship, in accordance with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), takes place “when financial institutions and payment intermediaries shut down accounts or inhibit transactions” online. This approach might “have serious ramifications for free expression online,” according to EFF. All of this adds up to the depressing fact that a small number of payment processors—such as credit card companies—have a disproportionately large impact on a website’s capacity to monetize particular types of content. In addition, organizations like Visa and Mastercard are “ill-suited,” in the words of the EFF, to weigh the effects and choices associated with the removal of financial support for adult websites.
How Do Banks Censor Professionals in the Adult Industry?
Following the publication of journalist Nicholas Kristof’s article “Children of Pornhub” in The New York Times, major credit card providers including Mastercard and Visa demonetized and attempted to prevent all transactions for Pornhub premium.
Additionally, this made it harder for Pornhub content creators to withdraw their revenue share and content-related revenues. Such a choice is obviously financial censorship because it was so disastrous. To recover some kind of payments and monetization that was prior to Kristof, the big tube site had to reach a deal with the required payment services, which took many months. The credit card companies’ too broad response to a moral panic that has zero regard for Pornhub’s legitimate interests was outright financial suppression.
Other Situations
It is difficult to deal with other instances of financial discrimination and censorship. For instance, Alana Evans suffered financial discrimination when her bank closed her accounts as a result of her work in the porn industry.
Wells Fargo, her bank, informed her via letter that her account would be closing. She initially believed it to be a prank, but later learned that Wells Fargo had done it. Evans stated in a guest piece for The Daily Beast in September that “a bank like Wells Fargo could identify which of their customers are involved in legal sex work and remove us all in one fell swoop.”
She wrote, “As tax-paying employees, we deserve protection from the prejudices of big banks. Mastercard and Visa, two of the largest credit card firms, have already bowed to criticism and stopped doing business with pornographic businesses like Pornhub. The workers who are merely trying to survive are now the banks’ main target because they are more vulnerable. But I think that time and again, our strength has been demonstrated.”
We at Adult Business Consulting think that everyone should fight against this type of prejudice against our sector.
At Adult Business Consulting, we hope you have enjoyed reading this article. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us.