Banks Coming Aboard For Porn?

So maybe, just maybe, we can score one for porn?

At least in the UK.

A UK financial services industry regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority or FCA, just posted a press release, entitled “UK Payment Accounts and Closures: Update.” This report levels a warning against banks denying “banking products” to adult content producers as well as sex workers. These UK findings, if taken seriously by the business community, could have major implications, outing as it does the inherent prejudice (not to mention difficulty) adult providers find when attempting to safely and efficiently conduct their business.

The FAC’s findings, also address the discrimination charities and pawnbrokers face from their lenders and banks, and highlighted the positive feedback the FCA found when dealing with these companies.

It’s all good in the porn paying hood

"We’ve seen examples of really good practice,” said FCA's executive director of consumers and competition, Sheldon Mills about the adult companies surveyed. And overall, his company's report strives to make people “…aware of what accounts there are that might be right for them, more support for the vulnerable, and people not being denied access without good reason." But as is true in the UK, applies to companies across the world; up until now adult entertainment companies and sex workers have faced Herculean challenges when looking to acquire, keep, and work financial services for their services and product.

Surely because of the kind of services and products they provide and how they have always been perceived as not conducting good practices. A false claim, as Mills and his fellows surely found.

And seeing that at the start of this new year, the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), the “nonprofit non-partisan trade association for the adult industry” met with top-level senior U.S. Department of Treasury officials to combat present anti-trafficking and anti-money laundering regulations consistently leveled at adult businesses., the problem the FCA addresses in their report surely goes beyond their home country.

Reputation

More often than not, even if not expressed, it comes down to a guilt-by-association worry banks and lenders have when it comes to working with the adult industry. It happens as much from credit card companies, as in a famous recent Mastercard case, as much with lowly writers trying to eke out a living penning all kinds of scene scripts, press releases, and blogs.

Adult work of all kinds is still viewed by many, and surely by heavily salaried stockholders manning bank transactions, as a risky/dirty business. But for sex workers or content creators making their living from a client’s recurring monthly credit card charge or some other needed bank transaction, relying on cash or a personal bank account could prove problematic and maybe risk too much public exposure.

Until the time that the Free Speech Coalition can make their proposed adult credit union a reality, we need to take the UK’s findings as a sure victory and coddle some hope for the future of us all getting and making payments over our naughty needs.