SpankPay, a cryptocurrency payments processor of the adult entertainment content platform SpankChain, has decided to shut down after its upstream payment processor, Wyre Payments terminated its agreement with the company earlier this year.
On March 21, SpankPay took to Twitter to reveal the company is shutting down after it failed to find a new upstream payments processor citing “hostile banking environment”. In a series of Twitter threads, the company wrote other service providers rejected SpankPay due to the latter being in the adult entertainment business.
SpankChain launched SpankPay in 2019 to help adult content creators cut out third-party intermediaries such as traditional banks enabling its customers to pay using several digital tokens including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC).
With SpankPay being discriminated against due to the nature of our business, we’re as motivated as ever to end these extra-legal censorship practices enforced by financial institutions. Thank you for being part of our community. The fight goes on.
— SpankPay (@SpankPay) March 20, 2023
Wyre Doesn’t Work With the Adult Entertainment Industry
It seems SpankPay’s troubles started in February after its previous crypto payments provider, Wyre had terminated its agreement with the adult entertainment platform quoting, “violations of any third-party payment processor or network rules.”
Following the discontinuation, SpankPay announced on Twitter that this was a “targeted shutdown” by Wyre because their new payment processor “doesn’t work with the adult business.” SpankPay wrote,
“This was a targeted shutdown by Wyre because their new payment processor, checkout dot com, doesn’t work with adult businesses. This came as a shock, seeing as our relationship with Wyre had been supportive and respectful up until this point.”
1/ Once again, we have unfortunate news:
Payments on SpankPay are suspended indefinitely (again), this time because @sendwyre decided to shut down our account in a targeted fashion. https://t.co/6jmPNj09KB pic.twitter.com/oXSCP4i9Rj
— SpankPay (@SpankPay) February 15, 2023
In a statement, SpankPay advisor Allie Knox, explained the discrimination against the nature of its business has made it no longer feasible to run SpankPay. Instead, the team will shift focus to its other products and continue to develop the adult indistry with services.
SpankPay also hinted at building other adult-industry-friendly payment solutions to assit adult entertainers and merchants in accepting cryptocurrency for their services. The company added,
“With SpankPay being discriminated against due to the nature of our business, we’re as motivated as ever to end these extra-legal censorship practices enforced by financial institutions.”
Playboy Losses $4.9M on Ethereum Based NFT Project
The news comes hot on the heels after Playboy Enterprises, the parent company of the iconic adult entertainment brand, lost a whopping $4.9 million on its Ethereum-based NFT project, due to the sudden drop in Ethereum’s (ETH) value.
Over the past few years, communities of sex workers actively started turning to Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies as a manner of payment for products and services to protect themselves as most mainstream credit cards, banks, and payment platforms ditched associating with the adult entertainment industry.
