For years, adult performers, creators, producers and adjacent businesses have routinely had their access to basic financial services curtailed — not because they are inherently higher-risk customers, but because a whole category of lawful work has long been treated as unacceptable.
Now, for the first time, a federal banking regulator is on record acknowledging this problem.
Building a compliance program that distinguishes between lawful, well-documented adult businesses and genuinely suspicious activity takes time, training and operational support. Blanket exclusions, by contrast, are administratively easy.
In December 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released preliminary findings from a supervisory review of “debanking” at nine large banks that it oversees: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank and BMO Bank.
The OCC’s headline conclusion was blunt: These banks have maintained policies that made “inappropriate distinctions” among customers based on lawful business activity — often through blanket sector restrictions or heightened internal barriers that function like a denial of service.
This article will explore the problem of debanking, what this new development could mean for the adult industry, and what challenges still lie ahead.
Legal Businesses Left in the Cold
For adult businesses and creators, banking access isn’t just about having a checking account. It’s also about:
- Reliable card acceptance and payment rails.
- Predictable holds and chargeback policies.
- Merchant services that don’t terminate without warning.
- Stable business accounts that won’t be closed because of “reputation” concerns.
- The ability to pay contractors, studios, editors, marketing vendors and taxes electronically.
When banks apply sector-based exclusions, the result is often sudden account closure, inability to get merchant services, frozen funds, or recurring demands for documentation that other lawful businesses aren’t asked to provide.
The OCC’s findings help explain how this happens. Banks can embed “adult entertainment” into internal restricted-business lists, require escalated approvals or use “reputational risk” frameworks that effectively make normal banking contingent on being socially acceptable rather than financially sound.
Real-World Harms of Debanking
When lawful adult businesses are denied stable financial access, the consequences aren’t abstract. Adult businesses and people working in the business can face:
- Safety risks. Cash-heavy operations increase theft risk and personal vulnerability, but may be the only option when debanking happens.
- Tax and payroll complications. Difficulty paying taxes or contractors cleanly can create downstream legal exposure.
- Business instability. Platforms and creators can lose income overnight if merchant services terminate.
- Stigma amplification. Financial exclusion reinforces the idea that lawful adult work is inherently illegitimate.
These harms ripple outward. Vendors, accountants, landlords, insurers and even family members can become entangled when banks treat an adult-industry connection as disqualifying.
Nor is debanking uniquely American. In the U.K., for example, the Financial Conduct Authority has warned banks about denying business accounts to sex workers and others in the adult sector, emphasizing the harm created when legal work is effectively pushed outside mainstream financial services.
How Banks Justify Exclusionary Practices
Banks commonly rationalize restricting adult-industry customers by pointing to financial crime risk, anti-money-laundering obligations and reputational risk. Some of those concerns can be real, in specific cases. After all, every industry has bad actors and banks must manage fraud, exploitation, trafficking indicators and suspicious payment patterns. But the OCC critique signals the core problem: replacing individualized, risk-based assessments with broad, category-level judgments.
That shift matters because the industry is not monolithic. “Adult industry” can mean a performer operating as a sole proprietor, a production company, a platform selling digital content subscriptions, a lingerie retailer, a sexual wellness brand or a legal service provider catering to adult clients. Treating all of these people and businesses as effectively unbankable is not risk management. It is risk avoidance at the expense of lawful commerce.
The OCC’s preliminary findings document identifies “adult entertainment” as one of the industry sectors impacted by these policies. It describes internal practices where lines of business at some banks either strictly restricted access to certain products/services or required escalated review for customers connected to “adult media and non-media,” including “products and services of a sexual nature.”
Importantly, the OCC did not frame this as a set of isolated mistakes or one-off customer service failures. The critique focused on policy-level choices — statements and rules that can be applied broadly, regardless of an individual customer’s actual risk profile.
Why Debanking Persists Even After Public Scrutiny
If a regulator is openly criticizing “inappropriate distinctions,” why does banking discrimination in adult industries keep happening? Part of the issue is waiting for the regulatory process to play out, a process that may understandably feel glacial to those whose livelihoods are directly impacted. However, there are other factors likely to remain in play even if the OCC’s findings lead to tangible monitoring and enforcement measures. These include the following:
- ‘Reputational risk’ is elastic. Banks can’t easily quantify it, and it often becomes a catchall justification. Once an industry category is deemed reputation-sensitive, the safest internal move is to deny or offboard rather than develop nuanced controls.
- De-risking is operationally convenient. Building a compliance program that distinguishes between lawful, well-documented adult businesses and genuinely suspicious activity takes time, training and operational support. Blanket exclusions, by contrast, are administratively easy.
- Payments are a chokepoint. Even when a bank is willing to keep a deposit account open, payment processing partners, card networks or third-party vendor policies can still cause disruptions. This creates an ecosystem where a single risk-averse node can collapse the whole chain.
- Adult creators are disproportionately ‘small business.’ Many creators are independent contractors or microbusinesses without dedicated compliance teams or sophisticated accounting support. That makes them more vulnerable to documentation demands, inconsistent underwriting and sudden policy changes.
What Fair Access Could Look Like in Practice
The OCC’s report points toward a framework regulators and banks could adopt: risk-based, conduct-specific decisions rather than category-based exclusions. Such a workable fair-access approach would include:
- Clear written standards. These are needed to distinguish legal adult businesses from prohibited or illegal conduct. That includes narrowly tailored transaction monitoring calibrated to actual typologies.
- Consistent onboarding requirements. Consistency is needed to ensure that adult businesses aren’t subjected to arbitrary hurdles.
- Appeal and review processes. Defined steps need to be followed before account closures or service terminations happen.
- Documented reasons for adverse action. Such reasons would have to cite conduct rather than “reputation.”
In other words, a fair framework would treat adult businesses like other lawful, risk-manageable industries — because they are.
The OCC report is significant, but it doesn’t solve the problem by itself. Banking discrimination against the adult industry persists because stigma, reputational-risk logic and operational incentives still make “debanking” feel safer to institutions than building nuanced compliance pathways.
If regulators want lawful commerce to remain lawful in practice, not just in theory, fair access has to mean more than discouraging political or cultural bias. It has to mean that banks can’t quietly convert “lawful but unpopular” into “functionally unbankable” — especially when the costs are borne by small businesses and independent workers.
This article does not constitute legal advice and is provided for information purposes only.
Corey D. Silverstein is the managing and founding member of Silverstein Legal, which represents all areas of the adult industry. His clientele includes hosting companies, affiliate programs, content producers, processors, designers, developers, operators and more. He is licensed in numerous jurisdictions. Contact him via MyAdultAttorney.com, corey@silversteinlegal.com or 248-290-0655.
