Mastercard, Visa Stop Payments Processing On Pornhub Over Alleged Content

Mastercard and Visa won’t be processing payments for Pornhub anymore, Reuters reported, with the two payments giants citing reports of the numerous videos posted on the site of sexual assault of minors.

Mastercard said it would be permanently end the use of its cards on the sex video site after the report came out and was confirmed, while Visa said it would be suspending the payments until an investigation was completed.

Pornhub said the payments giants’ decisions were “disappointing” since it had recently instituted new ways to stop the issue, including a ban on downloads and only letting verified user accounts upload content.

The story comes from a recent New York Times piece that goes into detail on the ways people upload videos of sexual assaults or nonconsensually-shot videos of minors on the site, going into detail on the way women’s lives have been ruined over videos uploaded without their knowledge to the site and of the lack of oversight on what gets uploaded. The piece also found that there are videos on the site of assaults on unconscious women and girls.

Pornhub denied many of the allegations and said the news of Mastercard and Visa ending payments for the site was “crushing” for users.

Mastercard announced it was “reviewing ties” with the site after the NYT article, written by Pulitzer Price-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof, called out several payments companies for allowing payments to Pornhub even in spite of the illegal content there while PayPal had banned the payments.

“And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women,” he wrote in the piece. “If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa.”

PayPal cut off payments from Pornhub to pay sex workers who let the site use their videos in November of 2019.