That's why adult industry merchants are a thing, like CCBill. They have been around for decades and its kind of a non-issue. Can still accept Visa, MC, AMEX, etc.

source: used to run porn websites back in the early 00s.

How does something like CCBill stay in business when the card networks themselves have strict guidelines on chargeback rates that'll get you booted from the network?

Presumably, such merchants are basically outsourcing their chargeback resolutions to CCBill, who I assume is quite good at fighting them via proof of purchase.

They charge 10% (or at least they did ~10 years ago, probably higher now) and require you maintain a 30% reserve and then they use that money to continue to lobby Visa/MC to prevent competition.

If this was the main reason they would just charge more to process the payments or add a longer hold period.

Honestly GP just sounds like wrong founder market fit. GP has a moral spine and was operating in a market where you must forgo it.

Nothing to do with charge-backs as our bank was not providing payment processing for us. We ran a "free site" that made its income from referring subscription sign-ups to paid sites through their affiliate programs. We sold nothing direct to consumer. Our customer was other adult websites.

The banking services they terminated consisted of a single business checking account, business savings account and company credit card. That was it. That was what they deemed "too risky."

We learned from someone who used to work at Chase's compliance department that most big banks just have a flat-out ban on working with any customers that are involved in the industry in any capacity what-so-ever due to concerns over serious things like human trafficking. It was the fact that we were distributing [lawful and traceable to the producer] content that made them not want us as a client.