Paysite Owners: Crisis - Visa Closing Accounts!
 

So last week Visa closed my account with Orbital Pay over "Visa VIRP violations and non-compliance" even tho I have not changed a thing on these five paysites in over ten years.

Accorfing to Orbital Pay's Risk Dept many paysites and accounts have been closed due to this new VIRP issue yet Orbital Pay does not tell me what specifically I am doing wrong and just directed me to Google 'Visa VIRP' to try and figure it out myself. They have had zero account closures re-opened after Visa shut them down while they say other paysites ARE compliant but will not tell me what they are doing correctly.

So: has anyone else experienced losing their merchant account over this new Visa VIRP issue? Orbital Pay also says that other processors (CCBill, Epoch) will start closing accounts if the same federal tax ID is used there as well.

WTF???

Can anyone direct me to a place where the guidelines are clearly stated and, most importantly, a step-by-step guide on how to be complaint?

I feel a massive apocolypse is coming with Visa.

Unfortunately, no. The guidelines are not clearly stated anywhere, much like paying your taxes you have to just guess and hope the bank is ok with it. The card networks don't want to commit to actual guidelines.

The changes I've been making are mostly around content reporting and removal. I've added a "report content" link to the footers which link to a form where anyone can submit complaints about the content on your site (which you own and have releases for and may have shot yourself :mad: ). Terms and conditions have to be updated to include your content abuse policy, reporting policy, what you do with reported content and how long you will take to remove/respond to complaints, and your bank will want a drafted policy of which law enforcement agenices you will report underage/abuse/csam/human trafficking too (that you shot/licensed and may have owned for 20+ years :mad:)

You're not wrong.

I recently had sites approved by CCBill and had to make similar changes. I will make those same changes for the five paysites with Orbital Pay but the merchant account is gone. I am worried if I switch the processing over to CCBill or Epoch that could trigger losing the entire account(s). The rep at Orbital pay said if the processing is tied to the same federal tax ID then it will happen.

Not sure what to do here. Has anyone else had their accounts closed recently? Visa began cracking down in February of this year.

sad to hear that
after reading this, i'm worried if this fucking rules will go outside the US too

I have not heard this yet but that's annoying if true. At least new corps and EINs are cheap and easy to get.

Ahh did not know that as I only have the one corp. Good to know. This means then I could get another MID just get a new EIN before doing so?

If Orbital is unable to explain what changes you need to make to be compliant, maybe you should soft-drop them?

Lower them in your cascade billing rotation to keep your rebillers alive and maybe process a few sales a month to keep some activity. When they ask why the drop in volume, just tell them that traffic has dropped (or any other reason you can think of).

Personally, I'd be weary of continuing with a processor that can't communicate what needs to be done to keep your account alive.

Visa is trash. They banned me years ago. Start accepting Bitcoin on your website. We don't need visa anymore

Actually the account is closed without notice. :( But after speaking with Orbital Pay it would not have mattered if they told me in advance as there was no way to comply with Visa. Visa asked for the account to be closed so that's that, no reasons given other than my sites shared "characteristics" with other sites that are known abusers. But my sites were sex education, not porn, or softcore at best. So the "characteristics" shared may mean the paysite business model in general.

Other much larger paysites have received scrutiny (and loss of processing) since February when Visa started cracking down on this new VIRP policy.

So it's not just me but it still sucks because no one can really say how to be compliant.

This isn't just Orbital. I've been trying to get clarification for a week using other routes and I would settle for a moment of "pulling teeth" because the answers I do get are worse than that.

"You are not doing this right."

"Okay, how can I change it?"

"You are not doing this right."

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Where do you use Orbital Pay if all your affiliate programs are on CCbill?

I was using it along with Epoch as a cascade for some older sites. The majority of my sites are with CCBill as primary.

An EU (Netherlands esp.) workaround? or Asia, Africa?

Another reason why they roped off Russia.

They do this to mainstream as well.

That sucks. Sorry you're going through it.

I hate the idea that people can just shut someone's account down, or stop a relationship without telling them what they did wrong, or giving them a chance to fix it.

Like you said, you probably didn't do anything wrong and they know it which is why they never give any real answers.

Sounds like adult is being excluded from everything slowly because businesses don't want to be associated with it.

Google especially is cowardly. Either don't allow adult and let the other search engines be the source of traffic for people seeking adult content, or allow it plain and simple. They want to appear 'family friendly' but not lose adult surfers. Visa is likely doing the same.

I get it, but this is mostly to do with recycled content, and content of dubious origin.

Like fuzebox mentioned earlier, not only do you need to have legal pages explaining the takedown procedures, but you also need to have good documentation for your content, and not just ID/2257. No legit paysite with a proper production will have these issues, only tiny paysites using recycled content... they just don't want the hassle of someone coming back and including the processors in the suit as well over a 2001 shoot for XYZ Productions LLC that no longer even exists, but My Paysite LLC is still using the said content, even though the performer moved on now, and is married to a rich dentist out of Connecticut.

You won't get issues like this with paysites that are producing new content, and that are able to get up-to-date information on performers, etc... but yeah, I don't see an issue here. This is just risk mitigation... would you risk it? I personally wouldn't... using recycled content is a disaster waiting to happen.

Obviously, it's different if you shot it, and are able to get in touch with performers, but otherwise... not much use for it.

Sure, maybe you have a point and that Visa is correct. But at least give a valid reason, or allow the business to fix the problem. Just say, "We don't deal with recycled content anymore. We used to but made the decision not to. Sorry for any inconvenience."

But my frustration was with (and always is with) people being vague and cowardly, and doing things because they 'feel like it' and not because of official procedure. They don't want anything they say or do to be on the record because then they'd have to own their policies.

They dont even investigate a site or domain properly before closing off a MID.
Had it happen to me.

Signed on a new girl. Got domain, shot content and girl backed out. So we let the domain go. 16 months later my MID gets shut down. I ask the processor why and they say X domain. I tell them I dont own that and have NOT owned it for 16 months and show them the registration from some Chinese company.

The new site was in Chinese and had Penis pills comments. NO ADS. And they shut the MID down for selling penis pills. But even the site did not have links. It was already abandoned and did not even belong to me.

They did not do any sort of investigation. Just shut it off because I owned the domain before and had it listed before. Got the MID back after 5 days and it cost me a shit ton of rebills and all for some lazy ass person to say they did their job and saved the " Underage " people.

They dont care.

You make good points but it is not really about older "recycled" content. If you have the paperwork and it's exclusive to you then it's the same as with new content. Older content still sells very well, especially vintage and even porn stars from 10 years ago. No it's more about bad actors in the paysite business who opened sites, card banged, played games, etc that has brought the attention.

BTW: my sources tell me that even huge well-known paysites are facing this type of scrutiny and have indeed lost MIDs since February. But many of the bigger sites have multiple MIDS and many are down to their last 1 or 2. What happens when those go? POOF bye-bye business.

The Goal I believe is to eliminate the paysite model altogether.

Glad you got your MID back! This is not possible for most since there usually is not an appeal process.

My particular sites that lost processing are small and the revenue is minimal. The real reason for this thread is to give Program Owners and those who run paysites a heads up that this is happening, and will get worse before it gets better. Best is to do what Fuzebox said (and I am doing) and making sure ALL language (and links) on both Tours and Members Areas are 'clean' and follow the vague Visa guidelines.

This is about a certain bank getting caught with its hand in the cookie jar.

Exactly what I was going to say.

That hand actually caused a chain reaction of Bank Audits in the High Risk space

Another thinning of the herd

Yes this seems to be the case. The acquiring bank was involved and apparently shut down mass amounts of accounts, including some that weren't doing anything wrong (like mine). If they processed a certain kind of way - monthly memberships, perhaps upsells, perhaps cross-sells, perhaps certain kinds of links (dick pills, cams, dating, gambling, etc) - you got shut down.

Crazy thing is, most sites (myself included) tend to mirror what the larger, more successful sites do in terms of pricing, terms, etc. But even these larger sites are looking for answers and Visa is not providing them.

While that sounds great in theory, most people don't use crypto so you are missing out on such a massive number of potential clients. This mindset is very short-sided.

You can nowadays easily use your credit card to pay and the recipient gets crypto, takes 5 minutes for money to arrive in the crypto wallet.

Sounds like another disaster waiting to happen.

Can you recommend any processors like this? And are they completely without censorship?

Another question for those of you who have crypto solutions what percentage of your customers pay with crypto?

Crypto billing is generally useless because it's not recurring.

You need CC billing for obvious reasons that need not be mentioned.

Not to mention such a tiny % of consumers that use crypto anyways.

That's very peculiar since Epoch are generally stricter than most to get a merchant account. I don't want anything more to happen but is there someone at Epoch you can connect with that's very close to you to check and find out why?

I only ask since if one has done it - that gets out to the others and you may have a problem so try to find and fix before it happens. Netbilling is a great option as well so maybe talk to Mitch so he can help

Its not website processing...its a service, to where you would need to navigate potential customers. They choose to pay via credit card, bank wire, revolut, etc...and the recipient gets crypto. I use paybis mostly.

I misunderstood, but that's still a roundabout way that will convert less.

Of course. It was just my reply to a post how most people don't use or own any crypto. They don't need to do that, to pay by crypto, thats all.

I could not have said it better. It has nothing to do with being porn. It has all to do of not having a back up on 100 sites with thousands of dodgy recycled vids.

I have the answer direct from VISA


The reason is "Because Fuck You, I'm VISA"

One thing that has not changed since the early 90's

Is not mind-sided at all. You need to teach users about benefits of using bitcoin and 1 2 3 steps tutorial in same way as you teach a kid (such as anonimity, fast, easy etc). And they will learn and like this method.
I skip from credit card to bitcoin and was best decision, not to mention i dont give a shit about visa and mastercard fees and compliance at all.

not look good

Feel free to reach out if you are looking for options.