As I was walking past my local supermarket, a pleasant looking young man handed me a leaflet explaining how I could acquire "Adult Website Prepaid Cards" that would let me browse instantly without the need of a credit card - no personal information required.
I'll spare you the details (quite mild and uninteresting, especially for anyone who suffers under 100 spams a day).
The point here is that if I can be handed this near my local supermarket, this means that alternate payment systems are now well-entrenched in the "fringe" world of Adult content.
This development has been expected for years, ever since Visa and various US and other regulators launched their cleanup campaign. In some senses it is a surprise that it has taken so long; in other senses, one can understand that building an alternate payments system that works is really a tough job, above and beyond the call of your average entrepreneur. (Hats off to those who succeed.)
In a sense, those in Visa got what they desired - the cleanout of all "undesirable" businesses within their system, and the spawning of dozens of hundreds of alternate payment systems.
Posted by iang at January 17, 2004 05:23 PM | TrackBackContrary to common belief Visa and Mastercard are more than happy to provide payment processing services to the online pornography industry. It is Internet gambling that they have attempted to shut down entirely. The purported reason is that gamblers go into credit debt and are then unable to repay - leaving the credit card companies holding the bag (for credit they should not have given to begin with). Another speculation is that the mafia-controlled onshore gambling business in the United States has enoug clout to encourage Visa to shut off the money supply for their offshore competition.
Posted by: Ken Griffith at January 17, 2004 09:14 PM