Visa and Mastercard have stopped processing payments on Pornhub following a report of unlawful content on the site.
Mastercard will now suspend support for Pornhub after confirming the site contained “unlawful content.”
“Today, the use of our cards at Pornhub is being terminated. Our investigation over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site,” Mastercard spokesperson Seth Eisen told tech website The Verge. “As a result, and in accordance with our policies, we instructed the financial institutions that connect the site to our network to terminate acceptance. In addition, we continue to investigate potential illegal content on other websites to take the appropriate action.”
The unlawful content included videos of child abuse and rape.
Visa has not yet concluded its investigation, but they have announced that they would suspend payment processing at least until their inquiry has concluded.
“We are instructing the financial institutions who serve MindGeek to suspend processing of payments through the Visa network,” a statement from Visa reads.
Pornhub called the actions “exceptionally disappointing,” in a statement released following news of the suspensions.
Since then, the adult entertainment site announced actions to guard against images of abuse, nonconsensual activity and underage models on the site. They have also implemented a ban on unverified users uploading material.
“This news is crushing for the hundreds of thousands of models who rely on our platform for their livelihoods,” Pornhub said.
They will also be banning downloads from the site:
“Effective immediately, we have removed the ability for users to download content from Pornhub, with the exception of paid downloads within the verified Model Program,” their statement reads in part. “In tandem with our fingerprinting technology, this will mitigate the ability for content already removed from the platform to be able to return.”
