If you look at the timing of these decisions, it's pretty clear that that yeah it's risk based, but the risks are political. It's only a week between this op-ed calling on the credit card companies to drop Pornhub and them following through on it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...

There was a flurry of congressional bills specifically citing that article at the time. (Here's one for example: https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-introduced-criminalizin...) I can't find one that specifically threatens the payment processors, most go after the sites or their hosting providers, but the payment processors probably had the sense to realize they were in the blast radius and that it was best to pre-emptively self regulate.

Credit card companies acting to limit risk from discretionary enforcement of ambiguous regulations is also sort of political.

I'm certain the reason CC companies want to drop adult services is because of the vastly increased risk of charge backs, but I suspect they'd cast a wider net if not for politics. Absent the risk they'd be happy to pocket the cash, but with it public opinion gives them an out

If it were just an increased risk of charge backs, surely they could just charge them higher fees and make it work out. Or tell them they have to eat all the chargebacks.

Or they could just require 3d secure which iirc lets them say "you did 2fa when you purchased, we know this wasn't a fraudulent transaction, fuck off."

Not really. Merchants are the one who eat the chargebck costs plus the $20 fee for processing it that VISA/MC charge them. That's just pure utter bullshit.

Someone asserted to me that porn purchases have a really horrific chargeback rate, and that's the main reason credit card companies are against them. It sounds at least superficially plausible.

That's not really true. I consulted for two companies that provided payment processing services for... non family friendly websites. They were making out like bandits charging ~30% fees. The blended charge back rate for this side of business was about 5%. The blended charge back rate for the family friendly side of business was around 3%

trust me it's political.

I'm sure you're a nice person but I don't just trust unsubstantiated claims I read on the internet.