Feature Articles
Navigating Age-Related Regulations in Europe
opinion
Navigating Age-Related Regulations in Europe
Age verification measures are rapidly gaining momentum across Europe, with regulators stepping up efforts to protect children online. Recently, the U.K.’s communications regulator, Ofcom, updated its timeline for implementing the Online Safety Act, while France’s ARCOM has released technical guidance detailing age verification standards.
Why Cyber Insurance Is Crucial for Adult Businesses
opinion
Why Cyber Insurance Is Crucial for Adult Businesses
From streaming services and interactive platforms to ecommerce and virtual reality experiences, the adult industry has long stood at the forefront of online innovation. However, the same technology-forward approach that has enabled adult businesses to deliver unique and personalized content to consumers worldwide also exposes them to myriad risks.
Best Practices for Payment Gateway Security
opinion
Best Practices for Payment Gateway Security
Securing digital payment transactions is critical for all businesses, but especially those in high-risk industries. Payment gateways are a core component of the digital payment ecosystem, and therefore must follow best practices to keep customer data safe.
Ready for New Visa Acquirer Changes?
opinion
Ready for New Visa Acquirer Changes?
Next spring, Visa will roll out the U.S. version of its new Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP), which goes into effect April 1, 2025. This follows Visa Europe, which rolled out VAMP back in June. VAMP charts a new path for acquirers to manage fraud and chargeback ratios.
How to Halt Hackers as Fraud Attacks Rise
opinion
How to Halt Hackers as Fraud Attacks Rise
For hackers, it’s often a game of trial and error. Bad actors will perform enumeration and account testing, repeating the same test on a system to look for vulnerabilities — and if you are not equipped with the proper tools, your merchant account could be the next target.
How Adult Website Operators Can Cash in on the 'Interchange' Class Action
opinion
How Adult Website Operators Can Cash in on the 'Interchange' Class Action
The Payment Card Interchange Fee Settlement resulted from a landmark antitrust lawsuit involving Visa, Mastercard and several major banks. The case centered around the interchange fees charged to merchants for processing credit and debit card transactions. These fees are set by card networks and are paid by merchants to the banks that issue the cards.
It's Time to Rock the Vote and Make Your Voice Heard
opinion
It's Time to Rock the Vote and Make Your Voice Heard
When I worked to defeat California’s Proposition 60 in 2016, our opposition campaign was outspent nearly 10 to 1. Nevertheless, our community came together and garnered enough support and awareness to defeat that harmful, misguided piece of proposed legislation — by more than a million votes.
Staying Compliant to Avoid the Takedown Shakedown
opinion
Staying Compliant to Avoid the Takedown Shakedown
Dealing with complaints is an everyday part of doing business — and a crucial one, since not dealing with them properly can haunt your business in multiple ways. Card brand regulations require every merchant doing business online to have in place a complaint process for reporting content that may be illegal or that violates the card brand rules.
Creating Payment Redundancies to Maximize Payout Uptime
opinion
Creating Payment Redundancies to Maximize Payout Uptime
During the global CrowdStrike outage that took place toward the end of July, a flawed software update brought air travel and electronic commerce to a grinding halt worldwide. This dramatically underscores the importance of having a backup plan in place for critical infrastructure.
The Need for Minimal Friction in Age Verification Technology
opinion
The Need for Minimal Friction in Age Verification Technology
In the adult sector, robust age assurance, comprised of age verification and age estimation methods, is critical to ensuring legal compliance with ever-evolving regulations, safeguarding minors from inappropriate content and protecting the privacy of adults wishing to view adult content.
Account-to-Account Payments: The New Banking Disruptor?
opinion
Account-to-Account Payments: The New Banking Disruptor?
So much of our industry relies upon Visa and Mastercard to support consumer payments — and with that reliance comes increased scrutiny by both brands. From a compliance perspective, the bar keeps getting raised until it feels like we end up spending half our time making sure we are compliant rather than growing our business.
Understanding the Latest Server Processors
opinion
Understanding the Latest Server Processors
Over the last decade, we mostly stopped talking about CPU performance. Recently, however, there has been a seismic and exciting change in the CPU landscape, due to innovation by a chip company called Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Maintaining Payment Processing Compliance When the Goalpost Keeps Moving
opinion
Maintaining Payment Processing Compliance When the Goalpost Keeps Moving
VIRP is the new four-letter word everyone loves to hate. The Visa Integrity Risk Program went into effect last year, and affects several business types — including MCC 5967, which covers adult and anything else with nudity, and MCC 7273, dating services that don’t allow nudity.
Making the Most of Your Sales Opportunities
opinion
Making the Most of Your Sales Opportunities
The compliance road has been full of twists and turns this year. For many, it’s been a companywide effort just to make it across that finish line. Hopefully, most of us can now return our attention to some important things we’ve left on the back burner for months — like driving revenue.
WIA Profile: B. Wilde
opinion
WIA Profile: B. Wilde
B. Wilde considers herself a strategic, creative, analytical and entertaining person by nature — all useful traits for a “marketing girlie,” a label she happily embraces.
Proportionality in Age Verification
opinion
Proportionality in Age Verification
Ever-evolving age verification (AV) regulations make it critical for companies in the adult sector to ensure legal compliance while protecting the privacy of adults wishing to view adult content. In the past, however, adult sites implementing AV solutions have seen up to a 60% drop in traffic as a result.
Goodbye to Noncompete Agreements in the US?
opinion
Goodbye to Noncompete Agreements in the US?
A noncompetition agreement, also known as a noncompete clause or covenant not to compete, is a contract between an employer and an employee, or between two companies.
The Search for Perfection in Your Payments Page
opinion
The Search for Perfection in Your Payments Page
There has been a lot of talk about changes to cross sales and checkout pages. You have likely noticed that acquirers are now actively pushing back on allowing merchants to offer a negative option, upsell or any cross sales on payment pages.
Unpacking the Payment Card Industry's Latest Data Security Standard
opinion
Unpacking the Payment Card Industry's Latest Data Security Standard
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements and guidelines that apply to all businesses that accept credit card payments, and is designed to ensure the security of those transactions.
Compliance With State Age Verification Laws
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opinion
Compliance With State Age Verification Laws
During the past year, website operators have faced a slew of new state age verification laws entailing a variety of inconsistent compliance obligations.
