Should payment processors dictate online safety compliance for sites that rely on them?

People tend to trust their credit card providers to comply with regulations, but as online safety laws kick in, some are questioning how much power payment providers should have to enforce age assurance laws by proxy.

To wit: the current uproar over online gaming platform Itch.io, which has removed all  adult-oriented and NSFW games in an attempt to assuage its payments providers, Stripe and PayPal, and stop them from turning off the payment taps entirely.

Itch.io says the payment processors’ request was driven by pressure from Australian anti-porn group, Collective Shout (which has also campaigned against the Fifty Shades franchise, the hip hop artists Tyler, The Creator and Snoop Dogg, and other targets it deems harmful to women).

“We have ‘deindexed’ all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages,” reads a statement from Itch. “Recently, we came under scrutiny from our payment processors regarding the nature of some content hosted on Itch.io. Due to a game titled No Mercy, which was temporarily available on Itch.io before being banned back in April, the organization Collective Shout launched a campaign against Steam and Itch.io, directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms.”

“Our ability to process payments is critical for every creator on our platform. To ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers, we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance. We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors.”

‘We request that you demonstrate corporate social responsibility’

On July 11, Collective Shout issued an open letter to payment processors, to request that you cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games.”

The game No Mercy depicts content involving incest and nonconsensual sex. In a statement announcing its withdrawal from game platform Steam, its developers, Zerat Games, deny that the game was available to 12-year-olds, note the validity of certain sexual festishes, and wonder how many people would have known about the game if not for all the media attention. Nonetheless, the game has been banned in the UK, Canada and Australia, and is no longer available on Steam or Itch.io.

However, having found an offensive game and exposed it, Collective Shout has broadened its target, saying “we have since discovered hundreds of other games featuring rape, incest and child sexual abuse on both Steam and Itch.io. Most of the content found within the games, including the graphics and the developers descriptions, are too distressing for us to make public.”

Hence Itch.io’s attempt to head off any questions from payment processors by removing all of the would-be NSFW content.

The problem is, not all of it is games. Itch.io also hosts comics and e-books, and users have reported having LGBTQIA+ books delisted in the purge. According to PC Gamer, there is widespread concern that the ban portends a “conservative anti-LGBTQ tradition with a familiar pattern: culture war morality campaigns to brand everything they dislike as pornography and obscenity.”

A statement from the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) notes reports suggesting suspensions and delistings “have been taken with little to no communication and have disproportionately harmed developers producing legal, consensual, and ethically-developed content, including creators from marginalized communities.”

“Games, like any medium of artistic expression, can explore themes of intimacy, pleasure, trauma, or identity. When created ethically and distributed legally, these works deserve to be evaluated fairly, transparently, and contextually, not swept aside due to stigma or third-party pressure. The issue is not a lack of safeguards, but a lack of proportionate, informed, and transparent enforcement.”

Collective Shout using online safety laws to advance social agenda

Collective Shout is a vocal presence in the age verification debate. According to the Guardian, its director, the Christian author and commentator Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the Australian government’s Age Assurance Technology Trial. She argues that “payment processors have a right to determine what services they will provide, according to their corporate social responsibility, mission and values.” She also claims many games will probably be restored to Itch.io after the platform completes a review.

However, like the U.S. Christian right, her activism is rooted in a particular moral framework that deprioritizes free speech in the interest of curbing male violence against women and misogyny, but happens to align with conservative social values – and has no qualms about putting LGBTQ individuals in the crosshairs. Collective Shout’s social media accounts are reported to have referred to “porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists” and observers have noted that it espouses a strong anti-abortion stance.

Its politics aside, in leaning on payment processors to cut off gaming platforms, Collective Shout exploits age verification laws for ideological ends – the very thing many people fear will happen if such legislation and the attendant age verification and age estimation technology becomes widespread.

According to RockPaperShotgun, Itch.io has reached out to alternative payment processors who are “more willing to handle the kind of material Stripe and Paypal consider objectionable. They’re also looking at stricter age-gating for Itch.io and better content classification.”

Yoti continues to see numbers rise after July 25

Nonetheless, there are apparently many who trust that age assurance and digital ID solutions can avoid sweeping content bans. Having reported a 25 percent spike in traffic on Friday, as the UK Online Safety Act kicked into gear, Yoti has informed Biometric Update that it saw a further 25 percent spike the following day. This suggests its numbers are on a steep upward trajectory – and that as the law normalizes, many will simply seek a safe, easy and visible option for age verification or facial age estimation.

For more on the age assurance market, check out the latest Age Assurance Market Research Report from Biometric Update and Goode Intelligence, which identifies gaming as one of the key sectors for age verification in the near-term future.

2025 Online Biometric Age Assurance Market Report & Buyers Guide – UK Edition

Article Topics

age verification  |  digital payments  |  gaming  |  Mastercard  |  Online Safety Act  |  UK age verification  |  Visa