What is the PayPal of the adult industry?

November 22, 2009 8:29 AM

Adult Website Filter: Which payment processor should I use to sell advertising space on my porn website?

I'm going to launch a little project of mine which is a porn website. I won't go into detail about what it does, but it's basically a portal site for advertisers to place banner ads to their websites. I want to be able to accept payment from the advertisers.

I would normally use PayPal for such a thing, but as far as I can tell, PayPal will not allow any transactions from an adult website, no matter what they're for. Is this true? If so, can you recommend another good payment processor which will allow adult content? Note that I am not selling adult content; I am only selling advertising space which will contain adult content.

I have heard that CCBill is good, but their fees are high (starting at 14.5%), and I don't want the upfront cost of a full merchant account.

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (2 answers total)

follow-up from MeFite who would prefer to remain anonymous.

Have you looked into adult verification systems? Perhaps one of them might have a payment processing solution to fit your needs? It has been quite a few years since I've done the adult-webmastering thing, but I seem to remember this site being quite useful. Definitely check out their message boards.

Also, depending on where your site is hosted, you might have a solution there. Our adult-web-host had a payment processing package. This was back about 7 or 8 years ago, though, so YMMV.

posted by jessamyn at 12:00 PM on November 22, 2009

I'm far from an expert here. I only know what others have told me (and my info might be out of date), but from what I understand of what you're trying to do, I think a payment processor is far beyond what you'd need.

Unless you have a gigantic site with tons of traffic at your command already, or things have changed radically since I knew people who ran free sites, there aren't any advertisers who are going to contact you personally, much less pay you a set fee to run their banners on your site.

Likely you'll be looking for and at affiliate programs - locating sites you want to advertise FOR and registering through THEM to receive a portion of sales made originating from your site.
posted by lilnublet at 4:15 PM on November 22, 2009