Oy vey, VISA again...

[gaybucks_chip]

I'd like to see that stand up in court. What other services are allowed to dictate to the companies they service? I can't think of any.

Take your mouth off of VISA's nipple, dude... the milk you're drinking is more like Kool Aid

ANY company that does business is allowed to dictate (as long as they don't discriminate against protected classes, which gay webmasters are not) what customers they will or will not do business with.

Many webmasters will not accept members from certain foreign countries due to fraud problems.

Some doctors won't accept certain patients who are in a class that's litigation prone.

CCBill doesn't process for sites that it feels skirt too close to the line of acceptability in terms of cardmember association rules

Practically every restaurant you visit has "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" written on their menus.

Some affiliate programs don't accept affiliates if they aren't comfortable with they way those affiliates market, or for other reasons.

All of these are entirely legal and permissible.

The Visa cardmember association is a business. It is not a monopoly business, so it is not subject to government oversight in the way that, for example, Greyhound Bus Lines (as the only interstate bus company in the US) is.

And... when you're getting (free) advice from the attorney that probably represents more of the major companies in the gay adult industry than any other, telling you that you have no case, you might do better to accept the advice than insult him.

[Xstr8guy]

I'd like to see that stand up in court. What other services are allowed to dictate to the companies they service? I can't think of any.

Take your mouth off of VISA's nipple, dude... the milk you're drinking is more like Kool Aid

Visa could instantly stop processing for adult websites and they wouldn't even notice it on their bottom line. Thanks, but I'll keep suckling on Visa's teet.

[gaybucks_chip]

The adult industry contributes a ton of money to the credit card industry each year, in addition to the 'WMD' service fees we pay. Money is the only language they understand. Take that away, and we regain our clout.

One more point:

FirstData is the largest bankcard processor in the US. They control some ungodly percentage of Visa/Mastercard processing that happens in the US.

About a year and a half ago, they dropped all of their remaining adult clients, after having not accepted new ones for a long time. IBill was one of those. (So, I heard, were CCBill and Epoch.) If you combine the revenues of Ibill (in 2002) with CCBill and Epoch, you have the vast majority of the adult processing business. Yet First Data dropped that business in the blink of an eye.

The adult industry isn't nearly as powerful a force in the marketplace as you'd like to believe. At the point it becomes too much hassle for the cardmember associations to deal with adult clients, they will simply drop them.

Boycotting is very unlikely to get you anywhere.

Oh... 1/10 of 1% of ALL Visa transactions is an insanely large number. Probably bigger than the entire GNP of a number of smaller countries. But Internet and adult transactions are a much, much larger portion of the chargebacks. That's why the high-risk registration and so forth.

[rick]

Visa does not want to process for sites with certain wording. Bank Of America will not accept accounts from customers in the adult industry or liquor industry.

It's not discrimination. Just like you have the right to block .ru or .cn from accessing your websites.

If you want to play in their sandbox, you have to play by their rules.