Payment processors for adult sites: what they actually ask for

Almost everyone who starts a directory finds out the same thing in the same order: building the site is the part that goes to plan, and getting paid is the part that does not. The large processors decline the business outright, usually with a form letter that explains nothing. The ones that accept it ask questions that have nothing to do with software, and they ask them in a predictable order. Knowing that order in advance turns a three month stall into a fortnight of paperwork.

What follows is not legal advice, and the details shift from one country to the next. It is the shape of the conversation, written down so that you walk into it with the answers already prepared instead of discovering each question a week after you failed to answer the last one. Every item below has cost somebody a month.

Why the large processors say no

The refusal is rarely moral, whatever the wording suggests. Card networks classify adult content as high risk, and high risk is an actuarial statement: a measured probability of chargebacks, complaints and regulatory attention. A processor that takes you on at the ordinary rate earns a thin percentage of your volume and carries the entire tail of that risk. At the volumes a new directory produces, the arithmetic does not work for them, and no amount of enthusiasm on your side changes it.

There is a second reason, quieter and more final. Most of the familiar names are aggregators: thousands of merchants sit under one master account, and a single merchant that draws regulatory attention puts every other merchant in the pool at risk. Their answer is a prohibited business list applied by a compliance team with no authority to make exceptions. Arguing with the agent who declines you costs a week, because the person reading your email could not approve you even if they agreed with you.

What exists instead is a smaller market of high risk acquirers and payment facilitators who price the risk rather than refuse it. They charge more, they hold part of your money for a period, and they want to know a great deal about you before they say yes. That last part is the only part of this that is entirely within your control, and it is where the time is won or lost.

What they actually ask for

The first question is who you are, not what you sell. A registered company, a business bank account in the same legal name, and identity documents for everyone holding more than a quarter of the shares. Usually also the incorporation certificate, a recent bank statement and proof of the registered address. A processor that accepts adult content is underwriting your whole operation, and it will not do that for a brand name and a personal account.

The second is what happens when something goes wrong. Who reviews the adverts before they appear. What gets an advertiser removed. Where the complaint form is, who reads it, and how quickly you reply. This is not fussiness: card networks fine the acquirer when a merchant collects complaints, so the acquirer wants evidence that you catch problems before their monitoring programmes do. A dated, specific moderation policy published on your own site does more here than any amount of reassurance in an email.

The third is the one most applicants forget, and it ends more conversations than any other. How do you know your advertisers are adults, and that they are who they claim to be? Identity verification has stopped being a feature you add later and become a condition of being underwritten at all. If you cannot describe the process, name the provider that runs it and show what a verified record looks like, the file gets closed.

Then the ordinary things, which are easy to get wrong and cheap to fix. Whether your terms are reachable from every page. What you say about refunds, even if you never give any. Whether an age confirmation appears before any adult imagery. Whether the name printed on the cardholder's statement is one they will recognise a month later. An unrecognised descriptor is the largest single generator of chargebacks in this business, and it is repaired with one text field.

Assume all of it will be checked rather than believed. Underwriters open the site, follow the links, read the terms and try the complaint form themselves. It is worth doing exactly the same, on a phone, the day before you apply, because a broken link on the page describing your own rules reads as an unfinished business.

The numbers nobody puts on the website

Pricing in this corner of the market is quoted per merchant, not per tariff, so treat any published figure as an opening position. Expect a percentage of each transaction several times what a mainstream shop pays, a fixed fee per transaction on top, a monthly account fee, and a setup fee that may or may not be refundable. Almost none of it is negotiable at the start, and most of it becomes negotiable once you have twelve months of clean history.

The item that surprises people is the rolling reserve. The processor keeps a share of every payment, commonly around a tenth, and releases it after a fixed delay, commonly six months. It is not a fee and you do get it back, but it means the first half year of revenue arrives permanently one step behind, and a business plan that ignores it shows a hole exactly where the money was supposed to start working.

Then the penalties. A fee for every chargeback, whether or not you win it. Thresholds above which the card networks place you in a monitoring programme, with monthly fines and a remediation plan attached. Those thresholds are low enough that a few hundred transactions a month leaves very little room for error, which is the practical reason why the billing descriptor, the refund wording and the complaint form matter as much as the moderation policy.

The file to have ready before you write to anyone

Documents: incorporation certificate, ownership structure, identity and address for each significant owner, the business bank account details, and any licence your country requires. Alongside them, a plain description of the service you sell, which is advertising space and not the services your advertisers offer. Add a short account of the checks you run on advertisers and who provides them, because you will be asked for it in the second email if you leave it out of the first.

Pages that must exist on the live site before you apply, not after approval: terms of service, privacy policy, refund policy, a visible route for complaints, the rules advertisers must follow, and an age confirmation before anything explicit. The site should be reachable and populated. An application pointing at a holding page is declined without being read, and that decline goes on your record.

Finally a forecast: expected monthly volume, average transaction value, the countries your customers are in, the currencies you will bill in. Give real numbers rather than flattering ones. Overstating volume gets you priced for a business you do not have, and understating it triggers a review the first month you exceed what you declared.

Applying without burning your chances

Apply to three providers at the same time, not one after another. At least one will decline for reasons nobody explains, and sequential applications turn that into three months of dead time. Running them in parallel also gives you the only leverage a new merchant has, which is a second offer to compare against the first.

Understand that a decline is remembered. Underwriting decisions are recorded, and in the case of terminated merchants they are shared through an industry database that other acquirers consult before they open a file. Applying half prepared, being refused, then reapplying six weeks later with the same documents is the most expensive mistake in this entire process. Prepare once, apply once.

Once you are live, start the second account before you need it. Accounts in this sector close, sometimes with thirty days notice and sometimes with none, for reasons that have nothing to do with your conduct: a change in the acquirer's own risk appetite, a new sponsoring bank, a portfolio review. A directory whose entire income depends on one merchant account is one compliance memo away from having no income at all.

While you are at it, take some of the weight off the card rails. Bank transfer for annual plans, the local instant payment scheme wherever your advertisers actually live, and a wallet or two will not replace cards, but every payment that does not travel over a card network is a payment that cannot be charged back, cannot count towards a monitoring threshold, and does not vanish the week an account is closed. The directories that survive a termination are usually the ones already collecting a fifth of their revenue somewhere else.

None of this is difficult. It is simply a different conversation from the one software people expect to have, conducted by people paid to look for reasons to say no. Answer their questions before they are asked, in writing, on the site, and the whole thing turns into administration. Leave it until launch week and it becomes the reason there is no launch.