2024 Mastercard Adult Content Policy Explained

The Background and Mastercard Policy Changes Official Announcement

Since December 2020 the industry of adult content has been involved in the ongoing confrontation between banking companies and content creators, trying to monetize their hard work. It started with Mastercard, Visa, and Discover refusing to allow their cards to be used on Pornhub due to unlawful content being published on the platform. 

Then this summer OnlyFans was forced to ban explicit content from the platform due to Mastercard’s new rules, users stood up for content creators and their right to share any content while it remains legal and doesn’t involve children. 

On the 14 of April 2021, Mastercard officially announced changes to its network policy. In the article on the official Mastercard website, John Verdeschi, a Mastercard senior vice president of franchise customer engagement and performance states that the company from this moment pays special attention to merchants using the network and the company strongly stands against merchants who are involved in any kind of illegal activities. 

John Verdeschi’s answer for the reasons for such changes is as follows:

“You might ask, “Why now?” “In the past few years, the ability to upload content to the internet has become easier than ever,” wrote John Verdeschi, the company’s senior vice president of customer engagement and performance. “All someone needs is a smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection. Now, our requirements address the risks associated with this activity.”

Mastercard approves the usage of their service only on platforms with strict content control, so unauthorized underage users don’t interact with explicit adult content. New requirements came into force on October 15, 2021.

The list of 8 updated Mastercard Standards for Security Rules and Procedures

1. A written agreement must be met by the merchant and provider.
2. ID documents verifying that every person depicted in the content is an adult are a must if a provider publishes any kind of content. 
3. A provider and each person shown in the content must have a record of written consent.
4. It is permitted to publish content only from verified providers with an active policy for proving the age and identity. 
5. Content must be checked before it becomes available to the public. It must meet Standards and be legal. 
6. The Merchant has to check the content, they cannot market it, child exploitation is prohibited.
7. The Merchant must enable the reporting illegal content feature.
8. Any person depicted in content should have the ability to remove any piece of content he/she/they presented in.

We do understand that content creators and studios who have lived on funds they get from the monetization of their content might be shocked by such an unexpected decision, so we decided to go through each point of the above-mentioned list. We hope that it would help our customers to see that with the Connect platform their business is safe and sound. 

Connect Measures for Mastercard New Security Standards

Let’s have a closer look at each requirement and clarify what exactly it means and what measures are taken by the Scrile Connect team to comply with all these new requirements.

A written agreement must be met by the merchant and provider.

In the admin dashboard in every creator’s (content provider’s) profile, the admin has the ability to add any documents, written agreements, in order to reveal the loss of such kinds of agreements. The creation and signing process is the admin’s responsibility.

ID documents verifying that every person depicted in the content is an adult are a must if a provider publishes any kind of content. 

Before becoming an approved creator on the Connect platform every creator goes through the flow, where he/she/they add an ID scan, then admin checks it, and only after these measures admin approves the creator. Only approved creators can publish content on the platform, so everybody could see it. 

We are also ready to integrate 3-rd party services for ID verification, like Lightico, for example. This option is available for the PRO and Enterprise subscription plans.

A provider and each person shown in the content must have a record of written consent.

Content creators publish different types of content: 

• pictures from the phone camera
• files with the professional photographers’ collaborations
• collaborative content with other creators

It means that every business owner should take care to support this process documentation and get the record written consent from all persons depicted in the content. The Connect platform gives the admin of the website space for uploading this documentation for every creator from the admin side.

It is permitted to publish content only from verified providers with an active policy for proving the age and identity. 

This is a challenge for every business owner to build a strictly working process of the creators’ documents verification. We recommend you use ID verification websites, which are available in your country for free. The better way is to use special services.

Content must be checked before it becomes available to the public. It must meet Standards and be legal. 

Admin has the ability to check every post before its publication. Consequently, we have an Admin content wall feature. The post will not be published on the platform till the admin approves the content on this post. Just ask our support team to turn this feature on for your website installation.

The Merchant has to check the content, they cannot market it, child exploitation is prohibited.

This is a personal responsibility of the website owner. Users who are sharing the content with child exploration materials or the depiction of non-consensual activities must be disabled from the admin side immediately. Admin content wall feature is a first step in the measures of management of such kinds of cases.

The Merchant must enable the reporting illegal content feature.

Every user of the Connect platform website has an opportunity to report about illegal content publishing or otherwise violating the Standards with the Report button. In the nearest time there will be a Compliant form when you click a report button. So every user will have an ability to write a description of the report and the admin will get this as an automatic email from the platform, so the admin could take measures and use this information in the regular report for the Billing company.

Also, every user could write a text message to the admin through the Support button. Due to both actions the admin will get an automatic email and take appropriate measures, and also fix this case in his/her/their internal materials. Fixing every violation case with a description of the issue is a very good practice.

Any person depicted in content should have the ability to remove any piece of content he/she/they presented in.

Every user of the Scrile Connect platform has the ability to write to the Support team and report anything in a text message. We are also in the progress of improving this functionality.

Partnership with Scrile Connect is a reliable investment in your website’s future life. We will never allow the shutdown of your website. We are constantly developing and open to your ideas and suggestions. 

Final Thoughts

As you can see Scrile Connect team values the comfort of our partners, and we want you to feel that by choosing our platform you get not only a high-quality solution for your brand but also a team that follows the industry changes and new rules and is ready to back you whenever it is needed. 

In case your website would be checked for compliance in accordance with the updated Mastercard standards for security rules and procedures, we wish you to keep calm, as with Scrile Connect there is no need to worry about it. We will support you with everything you need for a smooth check-up. 

If you still have any questions, feel free to contact our managers. We will be more than happy to assist you.