Bear -
Unfortunately today, non-US cards present the highest risk and the lowest profit margin to almost any merchant acct.
This is not by any means saying that non-US cardholders are in any way grouped into some sort of category other than being non US.
What it does mean is that given the recently restricted chargeback ratios that Mastercard (1%) and Visa (2.5%) have imposed on all merchant accounts, everyone has to take a closer look at what they are doing.
Contrary to popular belief, a merchant account holder such as a third party processor doesn't want to be at 0% cb ratio -- it means you aren't letting enough good stuff through with the bad if you see this -- just like any other high volume enterprise, you should see glitches, it's a sign of the volume being done.
But for those that have run close to the edge on the previous cb ratios (which could often be found in the 5% range), this halving of cb allowances will mean some belt tightening.
CCBill, which is the only one I can specifically speak of, has the same 33 countries on the banned list today as we did 6 months ago, when cb rates were much more forgiving.
We haven't had to increase our scrubbing to meet the new standards but we do evaluate non-US cards from countries we accept more stringently, for various reasons, including the fact that its much harder to get any recourse from non US cardholders in the case of prosecution or litigation.
There is a very simple reason that cb ratio allowances for adult transactions have been lowered and the fines have gotten progressively stricter when they are imposed: for several years adult merchant accounts took full advantage of the cc system, sometimes to the extent of putting banks who handled their transactions out of business.
If you really want to get a good look at how this happened, there is an EXCELLENT article -- long but very good at explaining where the problems started -- these arent the only companies who played loose and fast mentioned in the article, just a couple of the more famous ones --
http://riverfronttimes.com and do a search for porn -- the article is called Porn In the USA --