The New York Times has hit Pornhub with a very damaging investigation, which involved the alleged discovery of videos of both rape and child abuse on its website. In light of this investigation, two of the biggest payment companies in the world, Visa and MasterCard made an announcement that they would no longer be processing any payments associated with the adult content platform. As the two payment giants in the payments space are now out of the picture, the credit card options that are now available on the website include Discover and JCB (Japan Credit Bureau). Consequently, the only other reliable method of making payments on the website is to use various cryptocurrencies, the most prominent one being none other than Bitcoin (BTC).
Pornhub had introduced the crypto options after it had a disagreement with another payments giant, PayPal, so the company had had to improvise. The website had first begun to accept Bitcoin and Litecoin back in September to pay for premium subscription services, but the firm had already been accepting Verge, the Dogecoin fork, since April of 2018. The webcam models and ‘entertainers’ that do their business on the platform are allowed to receive their payments in the form of Tether or Tron. Cosmo Payment is another alternative that can be used, or direct bank deposits are also an option.
However, it is just not possible for the users to go with PayPal because the payments processor and pulled out unexpectedly in November of last year. Pornhub had published a blog post after PayPal’s departure and the clear cause of the argument had been highlighted as the use of USDT. As far as the recent departure of Visa and MasterCard are concerned, the latter was quick to state that their exit was permanent, which means there is no possibility that people will be able to use it to pay for the Pornhub Premium subscriptions.
The former, on the other hand, opted for a more lenient approach and said that their departure was temporary, but this will depend on the outcome of the investigations that it is conducting on its own. There is no doubt that this is going to have a big impact on Pornhub and it will have no other option but to innovate if it wants to have the money flowing in and to boost the confidence of both consumers and regulators in its product. The key strength of recovery for Pornhub is that it will not lose its demand and will only have to face more competition for getting consumers to scratch their itch.
There is no doubt that its crypto payments process will have to be streamlined. Even though the website does accept payments in BTC, LTC and XVG, the process cannot be described as a smooth one. Opting to buy with crypto takes users to pages where they still have to share their credit card information and they will have to make adjustments if they want to continue their cashflow, which might do the crypto space some good.
