Itch.io seeks payment processors who work with with adult material

Market structure and who’s at fault

• Debate over whether this is “definitely” solvable by the market given the Visa/MasterCard duopoly.
• One side: the root problem is card networks’ rules and concentration of power; processors are just enforcement layers.
• Other side: in this specific Itch.io case, Stripe/PayPal chose to ban porn more strictly than Visa/MasterCard require; Itch is right to switch to more tolerant processors.

Adult-industry processors, risk, and coding

• Commenters note a long‑standing ecosystem of adult‑friendly processors (CCBill, Epoch, etc.) that charge higher fees due to higher fraud/chargeback rates and regulatory risk.
• Correct transaction coding (merchant category codes, explicit disclosure to the bank) is essential; mis‑coded adult sales trigger problems and can look like fee evasion.
• Disagreement on whether networks are calling porn “illegal content” broadly, or mainly penalizing risk and misclassification.

Crypto and alternative rails

• Some propose stablecoins and Coinbase as censorship‑resistant rails, especially as major banks integrate with crypto.
• Critics: UX is too clunky for mainstream users, Coinbase itself censors, and crypto lacks built‑in consumer protections and chargebacks.
• Supporters counter that some customers will trade fraud protection for uncensored payments and can still rely on courts for recourse, but admit legal integration is weak today.

Censorship, free speech, and regulation

• Strong concern about payment processors acting as de facto content censors for legal material, with parallels to prior actions against Wikileaks and others.
• Others argue companies may justifiably refuse clearly harmful content (e.g., racist mods), but many still reject giving Stripe/PayPal broad cultural veto power.
• Several see payments as critical infrastructure that should be heavily regulated, offered as public infrastructure, or at least barred from discriminating against legal content.

Alternatives and workarounds

• Suggestions include specialized adult processors, bank transfers/SEPA/Wero in Europe, and instant payments, though tooling and UX lag behind cards.
• Gift-card schemes (including Amazon gift cards) are seen as impractical and costly, and wouldn’t avoid company‑level blacklisting.

Misinformation and blame dynamics

• Multiple comments criticize social‑media brigades for oversimplifying and misdirecting anger solely at Visa/MasterCard.
• The ecosystem’s opacity (PATRIOT Act, KYC/AML, multiple intermediaries) makes responsibility diffuse, encouraging finger‑pointing among networks, processors, and banks.