[Update, 1 p.m.: Visa has also reportedly frozen their transactions through Pornhub, according to the New York Times.]
NEW YORK — Credit card giant Mastercard Inc. released a statement today saying it will not allow their cards to be used for payments on Pornhub.
“Our investigation over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site,” Mastercard said in the statement. “We instructed the financial institutions that connect the site to our network to terminate acceptance.”
Mastercard added that it will expand the investigation of “potential illegal content” to other websites.
Update: Later in the afternoon, Visa released their own version of the statement via Twitter:
Given the allegations of illegal activity, Visa is suspending Pornhub’s acceptance privileges pending the completion of our ongoing investigation. We are instructing the financial institutions who serve MindGeek to suspend processing of payments through the Visa network.
At Visa, we are vigilant in our efforts to stamp out illegal activity on our network, and we encourage our financial institution partners to regularly review their merchants’ compliance of our standards on this and other platforms.
The investigations by both credit card companies were prompted by a sensationalistic op-ed by Nicholas Kristof published last Friday by the New York Times demanding state censorship and financial strangulation of the adult tube site.
On Tuesday, Pornhub released updated guidelines for user-uploaded content.
XBIZ has reached out to Pornhub for comment and will continue updating this story as more information becomes available.
