Adult cam sites have become increasingly popular and easier for people to use over the last several years. The webcams, microphones and other equipment needed to start channels on cam sites don’t cost much money. Adult entertainers can often get started with just a few hundred dollars.

While individual adult performers may not worry much about issues like credit card processing that supports multiple currencies, website administrators have faced difficult challenges since they started their businesses.

The good news is that business is booming for adult cam sites. The bad news is that many businesses don’t know how to find merchant accounts from providers willing to work in high-risk industries.

Zenti offers high-risk merchant accounts that process payments for businesses most credit card companies consider too risky. Get started today to resolve your payment processing issues for adult cam sites.

Adult Cam Modeling Has Grown Quickly Over the Last Few Years

In 2020, most people found themselves struggling to live through COVID-19 quarantine mandates that separated them from others. Luckily, the Internet provided solutions for just about everyone, including students and lonely hearts longing for companionship.

Many websites that provide adult content saw significant boosts in traffic. Some adult cam sites say that their traffic jumped by 30 percent. Other sites in the adult entertainment industry saw similar increases, including those for gentleman's clubs, adult toys and online dating.

Even some strip clubs started adult sites where viewers could pay to watch performers dance. The most competitive adult sites added VR and other innovative technologies to their guest services.

The amount of money that an individual performer can make with a webcam and an adult website varies significantly. The popular cam site AdultWork says that it could have up to 50,000 professionals working at any time. One performer charges £4 (about $5.25) per minute (more for femdom performances) and gives AdultWork 35 percent of her earnings.

High earners are known to make £5,000 to £7,000 (about $6,600 to $9,250) per week.

The Challenge of Making Money With an Adult Website

Adult cam sites have huge audiences and plenty of performers willing to fill the demand. Unfortunately, they often struggle to accept online payments, even when online business owners show that they have responsible plans. Any online store selling adult products will likely find it difficult to process credit and debit cards, even when they want to accept major cards like Visa and Mastercard.

Payment solutions like PayPal and e-checks also fail often fail to solve the problem, too. Plenty of business owners in the adult entertainment industry struggle to so much as open bank accounts. They just don’t have many options available to them because underwriters and merchant account providers consider them high-risk clients.

What Defines “High Risk” for Merchant Account Services and Payment Processors?

A lot of businesses get listed as high-risk accounts by merchant account service providers and payment processors. It isn’t just the adult industry. Other industries considered high-risk include:

• CBD
• Credit repair
• Payday lending
• Private airlines
• E-cigarettes

Operating online makes a business look like an even bigger risk to most payment processors.

Why do so many banks and payment processors want to avoid doing business with these industries? To some extent, it’s because they don’t want the risk of tarnishing their reputations by working with “unsavory” businesses. It’s impossible to deny that plenty of consumers see the sex industry (even the legal aspects of the sex industry) as an unwanted stain. Of course, plenty of those people say that in public before going home and watching performances on their computers…

There are also financial reasons for merchant services to avoid companies in the adult entertainment industry and other high-risk industries.

Why Some Merchant Accounts Don’t Process Credit Card Payments for the Adult Industry

There are also financial reasons for merchant services to avoid companies in the adult entertainment industry and other high-risk industries. Understanding these reasons should make it easier for your online business to find a payment processing solution that meets your unique needs.

Zenti can make it easier for you to start an adult merchant account, but it’s still important to know why the “high-risk” label gets applied to the adult industry.

Regulatory Requirements

No one likes to deal with regulatory requirements. They slow down businesses and introduce a lot of unknowns to the decision-making process.

The stakes also seem much higher when you work in an industry with a lot of regulations. What happens if an adult website lets a child view inappropriate content? Could parents or the government hold the payment processor partially responsible?

Many merchant account service providers and payment processors just don’t want to get involved. They could work with you. They’d just rather avoid the potential headache. They’re playing it safe, which is what their investors expect them to do.

The Threat of Friendly Fraud

“Friendly fraud” also looks like a high-risk possibility within the adult industry. The term “friendly fraud” probably sounds a bit funny. How could any type of fraud be friendly?

Friendly fraud, which also goes by the phrase “chargeback fraud,” happens when someone makes a purchase and then disputes the charge.

Friendly fraud happens for all sorts of reasons. Not surprisingly, some people just want access to adult cam performers without paying for the services. They will provide their payment info, watch the performance and then tell their credit card or debit card provider that they never requested the service.

It’s hard to see this form of friendly fraud as anything other than outright theft. Regardless, it happens and payment processors often return the consumer's money.

Adult industry websites can also experience friendly fraud because people feel embarrassed by their activities. Maybe a spouse or parent sees the charge on a credit card statement. Instead of admitting that they watching a webcam performance, they claim ignorance. “Someone must have used my credit card number!” they’ll say.

(More on chargebacks a couple of sections down.)

Fraudulent Cam Websites

Unfortunately, the adult entertainment industry has more than its share of bad actors. Underwriters and payment processors know that websites that offer adult content have bad reputations for stealing information from visitors. The number of fraudulent cam websites is high enough that a lot of companies just don’t want to bother with anyone in the industry.

The Problems With Chargebacks

The biggest problem with chargebacks is that credit card companies almost always side with consumers. You might imagine that customers can only use chargebacks when a mistake happens (they get billed for something they didn’t order) or fraud happens (someone steals their credit card information and uses it to shop online). In reality, credit card companies will often reverse charges just because customers complain that they didn’t like a product or service.

Chargebacks happen in some industries more than others. Unfortunately, websites that sell adult entertainment and adult toys have higher-than-normal chargeback rates. When the average merchant account service provider looks at the industry’s high chargeback rate, most of them back off. They don’t want to deal with it.

When you think about the impact of chargebacks, it’s easier to see why most companies don’t want to get involved. Payment processing, after all, costs money. When a customer asks for their money back, you and the online payment processor lose more than the cost of the product (in this case, the product is usually access to a cam stream). They also lose the money required to process the initial payment and then they lose the money it takes to reverse the payment.

Case by case, these are small losses. When your industry has enough chargebacks, though, the losses become considerable enough that payment processors avoid you.

Do you need a more reliable way to process payments for your adult cam site? Zenti's payment API can improve your success rate by integrating with nearly all payment systems and software options. Get started today by answering a few simple questions.

Ways To Minimize the Threat of Chargebacks

You can’t control what your customers do, but you can take some steps to help minimize the number of chargebacks your adult cam site gets. Doing so will make it easier for some merchant account service providers to consider accepting you as a client (although there are no guarantees. They can choose to do business with you or not for any reason.).

Send Trial Members Emails Before Their Paid Subscriptions Start

It’s common for membership websites to offer free trial members. People want to see what they’re getting before they pay for it. It makes sense.

Consumers don’t always think very far ahead, though.At the end of a new member’s free trial, the account switches over to a paid subscription and charges the credit card used to open the account. You can probably see where this is going because your site has probably experienced this plenty of times. The moment a person checks their credit card statement, they see the charge and either:

• Contact you about reversing credit card transactions.
• Contact their credit card or debit card providers for chargebacks.

While you can’t eliminate this problem, you can help control this number of chargebacks by sending members reminder emails before their accounts switch from the free version to the paid version.

Additionally, if the credit card company reaches out to you about a chargeback, you can show evidence that you contacted the consumer about the upcoming charge. That could help the credit company provider take your side instead of issuing the chargeback.

Require New Members To Verify Their Contact Information

What happens when a new member gives you a fake email address that makes it impossible for you to contact them? Yes, that’s a problem. It’s also very easy to prevent!

Require every new member to verify their contact information before you give them full access to your site. Your easiest option is to send a message to the provided email address and ask the member to click a link that verifies the address. If you don’t get a response within 24 to 48 hours, you just cancel the account.

The customer never has a chance to ask for a chargeback because they never successfully create an account with your business. This helps weed out fraudsters who want to access your site’s webcam streams without paying for it.

Make It Easy for Subscribers To Cancel Their Memberships

The easier you make it for people to cancel their memberships, the less likely they are to ask for chargebacks. When a free trial membership expires, a lot of people will accept the initial payment as long as they can close their accounts and avoid future charges. Some of them don’t know they can ask their card companies to reverse the charges. Others just accept that they’re partially responsible for letting the trial membership expire, so they pay the first month and move on with their lives.

Payment Processing Options for Adult Entertainment

Since so many payment processors, including PayPal and credit card companies, don’t want to work with “high-risk” businesses, you might as well avoid the headache of trying to convince them to help you.

You can save a lot of time and effort by going straight to Zenti, where you can start an adult merchant account that serves adult cam sites, dating apps, gentleman's clubs, strip clubs, adult toy eCommerce sites, and other adult websites. Zenti specializes in serving high-risk businesses, so you have a much higher chance of getting approved.

Common High-Risk Account Fees for Adult Businesses

How much you will pay for a high-risk account? That depends on the company you choose. Common fees include charges for:

• Setting up the account
• Registering credit card accounts
• Issuing refunds
• Security monitoring
• Insurance
• Chargebacks

Everyone pays fees for these and similar services. High-risk businesses tend to pay higher prices, though. To make matters worse, many companies don’t provide a straightforward way for you to find how much fees and services cost.

Zenti gives you transparent pricing so you know precisely how much you will spend.

Get a Reliable, Hassle-Free Adult Payment Processor With Help From Zenti

Take a big step toward making your adult cam site more successful than ever. Start an adult merchant account through Zenti to get the services you need at reasonable prices.