PHEWWWWW.
Things were starting to look a little bleak for a few porn studios which were being boycotted by payment giant VISA.
Studios which are owned by MindGeek – like SeanCody, Reality Kings and Men.com found themselves unable to process VISA payments as well as JCB or Discover in late December after a blistering article by the New York Times uncovered that one of MindGeek’s biggest properties, PornHub was being used by some of its users for illicit purposes.
In response, MindGeek purged millions of videos that it couldn’t verify as being legal. That was, a little too late for the payment gatekeepers Mastercard and VISA, who stopped the company from being able to accept payments from users.
The VISA boycott
This boycott, particularly by VISA then filtered down to other assets owned by MindGeek, porn studios like SeanCody.com which produce legal content for adult. Customers were still able to pay via their Mastercards.
The boycott only lasted a couple of weeks, but the damage to the porn industry is still being calculated. SeanCody.com, Men.com and other brands owned by MindGeek employ hundreds if not thousands of people from models to crews.
Checking today the situation tackle found that access to VISA’s systems have seemingly been restored to legit porn studios, however, if you’re looking to get paid access to PornHub you can only use Cryptocurrency.
Oh btw, on a side note SeanCody.com is doing a massive sale. You can buy a whole year’s subscription for just £47.99 while Men.com is giving a year’s subscription away for just £35.99.