SpankPay Adult Industry Crypto Payment Service Shuts Down

The adult-themed SpankPay fee service introduced Monday that it will shut down after its upstream fee processor, Wyre Funds, terminated its settlement with the corporate. Wyre cited “violations of any third-party fee processor or community guidelines,” in February.

SpankPay asserted that its contract was singled out.

“This was a focused shutdown by Wyre as a result of their new fee processor, Checkout.com, doesn’t work with grownup companies,” the corporate tweeted. “This got here as a shock, seeing as our relationship with Wyre had been supportive and respectful up till this level.”

Spankchain, an grownup trade blockchain, launched SpankPay in August 2019 “as a protected haven for our group,” permitting followers to pay for grownup content material immediately and discreetly utilizing Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero. The service later expanded to incorporate different cash.

SpankPay has confronted an uphill battle to search out different service supplier choices to offer monetary companies to a enterprise catering to the grownup trade.

“Now we have been on the lookout for choices since we obtained that letter,” SpankPay advisor Allie Knox informed Decrypt in an interview. “We regarded for different fee processors, and nobody desires to take us, or in the event that they wish to take us, their charges are insanely excessive.”

Knox says that whereas it’s not possible to run SpankPay, the staff will shift focus to its different merchandise and, extra importantly, give attention to altering the legislative issues that trigger this difficulty.

“We are able to construct the tech, however it’s nonetheless a political difficulty,” Knox mentioned. “It’s not fixing these social points, these political points which might be nonetheless occurring. So we’re gonna go to the foundation.”

The push for this legislative change started in December as Knox joined Spankchain founder Ameen Soleimani and a bunch of delegates from the Free Speech Coalition in Washington, D.C., to satisfy with Democrat and Republican lawmakers in regards to the discrimination the trade faces.

“We’re going to [provide] extra training and train intercourse staff find out how to use crypto—we haven’t turned our backs on crypto in any respect,” Knox mentioned. “We simply want this shit to get mounted.”

The grownup trade has a protracted historical past of battle with the standard monetary system, which forces many—from particular person content material creators like Knox to complete platforms like Pornhub—to show to cryptocurrency.

In December 2020, the grownup web site Pornhub started accepting cryptocurrency after Visa and Mastercard blocked prospects from utilizing their bank cards to pay for its premium service. The choice got here down after the Canada-based firm was the main target of a scathing article by the New York Occasions that identified the presence of kid pornography and sexual assault on the positioning. Pornhub has since made vital coverage modifications to clamp down on these movies.

“Working SpankPay in a hostile banking atmosphere has all the time been difficult,” SpankPay tweeted. “However the escalating assaults have turn into untenable for our small staff and the area of interest market we serve.”

Within the tweet thread asserting the closure, SpankPay mentioned it’s engaged on getting customers’ cash to them as quickly as doable, and inspired customers to create crypto wallets and “discover private monetary sovereignty.”

“With SpankPay being discriminated in opposition to because of the nature of our enterprise, we’re as motivated as ever to finish these extra-legal censorship practices enforced by monetary establishments. Thanks for being a part of our group. The combat goes on.”