OnlyFans reverses decision to ban porn after assurances from ‘banking partners’

At least one bank appears to have changed course after OnlyFans went public about banks blocking payments.

OnlyFans has made a sharp u-turn on its decision to ban sexually explicit content after it received a backlash from creators and some new assurances from at least one bank suffering bad PR.

The platform became wildly popular by connecting online sex workers to subscribers, but this has not gone down well with a number of major banks.

The firm was forced to change its policy on Aug. 19 to prohibit “sexually explicit conduct” following pressure from the Bank of New York Mellon, Metro Bank, and JPMorgan Chase, who refused to provide services to users of the platform.

In a tweet on Aug. 25, OnlyFans stated that it has now reversed this decision and it “will continue to provide a home for all creators.”

Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard.

We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change.

OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.

— OnlyFans (@OnlyFans) August 25, 2021

An OnlyFans spokesperson told TechCrunch:

“The proposed October 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators.”

However, the official statement merely says it “suspended” the policy which suggests the policy may be reintroduced at a later date if the assurances aren’t backed up in reality.

The decision to ban sexually explicit content had frustrated sex workers who rely on the platform to support themselves financially, especially during pandemic-induced lockdowns. Following the decision, some creators had already deleted their OnlyFans accounts and moved to alternate services.

At the time of the initial announcement, founder and CEO of OnlyFans, Tim Stokely, stated that the firm pays over one million creators more than $300 million every month, adding “making sure that these funds get to creators involves using the banking sector.”

Speaking to the Financial Times this week, Stokely named JPMorgan in particular as being “aggressive in closing accounts of sex workers”, or any business that supports them. It appears that OnlyFans was able to find a resolution to the issue with at least one bank after widespread publicity about the matter.

OnlyFans was founded in 2016 and claims to have more than 130 million registered users and 2 million creators.

In 2019, Pornhub faced similar problems when PayPal withdrew services from the platform, preventing it from paying models. At the time, Pornhub turned to privacy-focused cryptocurrency Verge (XVG). Visa and MasterCard followed suit in 2020 in shunning the world’s biggest porn site forcing further reliance on crypto.