SESTA/FOSTA and AdultWork.com

[Miss Deviant]

Payment processors are not something I know enough about to comment, I'm afraid. Hopefully there will be alternatives to those currently in use.

Basically; it s a payroll service which converts monies paid from dollars to the currency of your country. It's one of the things AdultWork charge commission for. 

So to give you an idea; each week, Adultwork send instructions to their bank, to pay all the providers. The bank then sends the money to the payment processor; who converts it into the respective currency. It's then sent to each countries clearance house and then to the individual bank accounts.

The problem is when it comes to payment processors; adult services are classed as "high risk" because of possible sex-trafficking, criminal activity like money laundering - it's why the previous processor was closed down, because the payment processor was being used for money laundering. Think of it like a commercial version of Western Union; because that's essentially what it is.

Now because it's classed as "high risk", there are many payment processors who won't consider working with a client who's in the sex industry. Those who do; will probably charge exorbitant fees. We are very lucky in some respects; because the current processor may well be charging an arm and a leg, but rather than increasing the rate of commission charged; AdultWork have chosen to absorb the cost.

Now the other reason for the sudden firing of US models could be because adultwork is a .com site - which is associated with the US. Rather than risk the site being taken down to be investigated; they've chosen to get rid of the US models so that site can stay up and running.

It may be temporary; it may not. It all depends how they can prove that a) they are not US based and therefore not under FOSTA/SESTA and b) they can guarantee that sex-trafficking does not take place on their site. 

Like I said; it's a law which gives very little room for clarity in these grey areas. We all know it's less to do with combating sex-trafficking and more to do with cracking down on sex workers. The problem is; we would have to prove it.