Payment Processor Fun 2025 – Making Your Own Merchant Service Provider
8 days ago
- #payment-processing
- #adult-content
- #tech-regulation
- Valve and Itch faced pressure from payment processors to remove adult content, leading to criticism and calls for alternative solutions.
- Creating a payment processor (PayFac) requires sponsorship from an Acquirer (usually a bank), significant financial resources, and compliance with strict security and regulatory standards.
- KYC (Know Your Customer) and KYCC (Know Your Customer's Customer) regulations add complexity, especially for adult content, requiring enhanced age verification and secure data handling.
- Itch, run by a small team, lacks the resources to develop its own payment processor or switch to high-risk payment processors like CCBill, which charge exorbitant fees.
- Payment processors and card networks (Visa, Mastercard) can enforce moral judgments on content, as seen with Fetlife, making it difficult to avoid censorship.
- Alternative payment methods (ACH, wire transfers, crypto) come with their own risks, fees, and regulatory hurdles, making them impractical for Itch.
- High-risk payment processors are expensive, unreliable, and often reject adult content, leaving few viable options for platforms like Itch.
- The root issue lies in the centralized control of payment systems by corporations and banks, which can be influenced by political and moral pressures.
- Criticism of Itch overlooks its limited resources and the systemic challenges of the payment processing industry.
- A broader solution requires rethinking online fund transfers, but current alternatives like crypto are fraught with their own problems.