LOS ANGELES — J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. recently was the focus of the porn industry after news came out that the bank was closing accounts of adult entertainers to avoid reputational and financial risk.
Now the spotlight is on PayPal.
While PayPal has for years barred people, as well as websites, from facilitating transactions involving “certain sexually oriented materials or services," the online money service has been receiving similar criticism as Chase's for their choke hold on accounts.
Numerous porn stars have complained loudly that PayPal's policies are too stringent, and become a major problem when funds get frozen by the company.
Adult performer Teal Conrad, for instance, had her accounts yanked after PayPal claimed that she violated the site’s acceptable use policy, in regards to her webcam shows.
Conrad said that a PayPal customer service representative told her funds in one account would be frozen for three to six months after her accounts’ closure.
Another porn star, Tasha Reign, said that her PayPal accounts also were closed over the course of the past year.
She said that PayPal didn't cite her webcam work in their reasoning to close the accounts, but instead said that her accounts posed network security threats.
Reign told XBIZ that she personally knows of others who have recently had their PayPal accounts closed, including Bonnie Rotten, Spencer Scott, "and I'm sure tons more."
"PayPal is not in charge of being the morality police," Reign told XBIZ. "They are outright discriminating against legal sex workers. This matters to everyone. What's next, viewers of pornography cannot use PayPal services? This needs to be taken to court."
While many in the biz bristle at the cancellations, the practice of discriminating against porn stars and others in the industry has yet to find its way to any courtroom, yet.
Chase and PayPal haven't released their side of the story, but one executive of a leading online adult processing company said there is one factor guiding their decisions to cut adult entertainers — their reputations.
"The real issue, in my opinion, is that the adult industry has associated with it, reputation risk," Melody L of L3 Payments told XBIZ. "No bank really wants to be associated with the adult industry. No regulator wants a bank in their portfolio to be involved in anything that could be risky for any number of reasons. Financial, reputation, systemic, operation and legal are the risks that the bank has to consider."
