> Payment processors need to either be regulated or voluntarily self-commit themselves to processing all legal payments. Nobody asked them to act as censors.
Finance is the single most heavily regulated sector of the economy. Almost certainly someone in government coerced them to stop taking these payments, exactly the same as has been done to unbank other disfavored industries.
This is one of the rare times that it's probably not that. I know a couple of devs who have built/worked on sites that have "adult" content, and they say that payment processors are always pretty hostile because the chargeback rates for adult content are an order of magnitude higher than most other areas[1].
This has resulted in payment processor execs historically being very prejudiced about against any site that provides that sort of content.
Combine this with the dual facts that no one of good standing is very motivated to stick their neck out to defend porn publicly, while many people define their politics by being very publicly against it, and you get a system that routinely discriminates against sex workers.
[1] Historically, this was from angry spouses/parents seeing it on the CC bill and the person who ordered it lying that "someone else must have stolen the card and ordered it"; nowadays actual identity fraud is so common that it's a real concern
This reasoning never made sense to me, given merchants have always been liable for card not present chargebacks. Processors, card networks, and even issuers don't lose a cent, because fees aren't refunded. Meanwhile, the merchant is out the charge and, nowadays, an additional fee. Even if the merchant wins and gets the charge, they still pay an additional fee.
It feels like this is one of those things that card networks say because they know folks who hear it won't think about it more than a few seconds to realize how much sense it doesn't make.
Finance is the single most heavily regulated sector of the economy. Almost certainly someone in government coerced them to stop taking these payments, exactly the same as has been done to unbank other disfavored industries.