For creators · 18+
Adult Payment Processors and Adult Payment Gateways for Adult Websites: Published Rates, Reserves and Fees
Two of the four major adult processors publish a real rate card. Everything below comes from those published pages and from Verotel's own merchant agreement, read on 24 July 2026. Where a processor publishes nothing, this page says so rather than repeating a number from a review site. Use the calculator to see what running your own processing would cost you, including the part nobody quotes: the cash a rolling reserve takes out of your hands for six months.
Adults 18+ only. Rates and reserve terms change without notice; every figure links to its source.
Adult processing cost calculator
Published rates only. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Defaults to 20%, the cut OnlyFans states publicly.
Effective rate includes the annual card-network registration fee spread over a year. Verotel's EUR 500 fee is not converted to dollars.
Skip all of it, sell hereWhat payment processor works for adult content?
Four processors serve this market seriously: Verotel, Epoch, CCBill and Segpay. Verotel and Epoch publish their rates, and those rates sit between 13.25% and 15.5% of every transaction, plus a card-network registration fee of EUR 500 or $1,950 a year. Verotel also holds a 10% rolling reserve for 26 weeks. Stripe, PayPal, Square and Shopify Payments all prohibit pornography outright. The practical consequence for a creator is counterintuitive: running your own processing usually costs more than the 20% platform cut you were trying to escape, and it costs it before you make a single sale.
Last updated July 2026.
Adult payment processors compared on what they publish
Read the reserve column next to the rate column. A lower headline rate with a long reserve can be worse for your cash position than a higher rate with none, and the reserve is the term creators find out about last.
| Processor | Published rate | Rolling reserve | Annual card registration | Chargeback fee | Best suited to | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verotel | 15.5% flat (Basic) | 10% held 26 weeks | EUR 500 (Basic) | None | A new site with no processing history, if you can fund the reserve. | Verotel price chart |
| Epoch | 15.00% down to 13.25% by volume | None | $1,950 card registration | $12.50 | Steady volume, and anyone who cannot afford to have cash held back. | Epoch merchant solutions |
| CCBill | Not published | Not published | Not published | Not published | Established adult businesses, quoted individually. | CCBill |
| Segpay | Quoted per merchant | Not published | Not published | Not published | Cam, fan and dating sites wanting a US or EU facing merchant of record. | Segpay high risk |
"Not published" means exactly that. CCBill and Segpay quote per merchant during underwriting, and we do not reprint figures from third-party review sites that disagree with each other.
Epoch's published rate tiers, by average weekly volume
This is the only full tier table any adult processor publishes openly, and it is a useful benchmark even if you end up elsewhere. Note how flat it is: from a standing start to $35,000 a week, the rate moves by under two points. Volume does not rescue you from adult pricing the way it does in mainstream retail.
| Average weekly volume | Processing rate |
|---|---|
| $0 to $5,000 | 15.00% |
| $5,001 to $7,000 | 14.75% |
| $7,001 to $9,000 | 14.50% |
| $9,001 to $12,000 | 14.25% |
| $12,001 to $15,000 | 14.00% |
| $15,001 to $20,000 | 13.75% |
| $20,001 to $25,000 | 13.50% |
| $25,001 to $35,000 | 13.25% |
| $35,001 to $45,000 | 13.25% |
| $45,001 and above | Quoted individually |
Source: Epoch merchant solutions, read 24 July 2026.
Processor by processor, and what the terms mean in practice
Verotel
Rates publishedYoursafe B.V. (Netherlands)
Verotel is the one major adult processor that publishes its full price chart, which makes it the honest benchmark for what this actually costs. The Basic account takes anyone: no processing history, no minimum volume, a flat 15.5% of every transaction and EUR 500 a year for Visa and Mastercard registration. The Premium account drops the annual fee and moves you to tiered rates set weekly, but it requires six months of processing statements to open and EUR 100 a week of volume, so it is not a starting point. Recurring rebills carry a 1.5% surcharge on top of the base rate, which matters a lot if you sell subscriptions rather than one-off clips.
“The Basic Account carries an annual registration fee of EUR 500.00* for Visa/MC registration and compliance monitoring. Verotel charges a fixed 15.5% of each transaction. [...] All accounts have a 10% 6-month rolling reserve.”
Verotel price chart
Epoch
Rates publishedEpoch (Visa and Mastercard Payment Facilitator)
Epoch publishes a ten-tier rate card keyed to average weekly volume and, unusually for this industry, holds no reserve at all. That is the single biggest practical difference between the two processors that publish their terms: with Epoch your money is not sitting in someone else's escrow account for half a year. The trade is that the card-network registration fee is higher and recurring, $1,950 at signup and $1,950 every renewal for US and EU digital-content merchants, and that refunds and chargebacks are billed per item at $1 and $12.50 rather than absorbed into the rate.
“We do not charge a transaction fee, nor a decline fee, maintenance fee, monthly fee, or annual fee. [...] New accounts without an established volume of sales start at 15%. [...] We do not require a security deposit nor do we withhold a reserve.”
Epoch merchant solutions
CCBill
Rates not publishedCCBill LLC (United States)
CCBill is the name most creators hear first and it has served the adult industry since the 1990s, but it publishes no public rate card. Its rates are quoted per merchant during underwriting, and third-party review sites disagree with each other about what those rates are, so we do not repeat their figures here. When we checked on 24 July 2026 the site was serving a maintenance page. Ask for the rate, the reserve percentage and the reserve period in writing before you sign, because those three numbers are the whole deal.
Segpay
Rates not publishedSegpay LLC (United States and EU)
Segpay openly markets to adult, cam and fan sites and acts as both the payment facilitator and the gateway, which means it can be the merchant of record so the charge on the customer's statement is not your legal name. It does not publish rates; everything comes out of underwriting. Its own page is candid about why this market is priced the way it is, and that framing is worth reading before you negotiate: the higher rate is the card networks pricing dispute risk, not the processor being difficult.
“Because of their global reach, content control challenges, and higher chargeback rates, adult, cam, fan, and dating sites are often seen as risky by banks and processors, making it harder to secure reliable payment solutions.”
Segpay high risk
What a rolling reserve actually costs you
The rate is the number everyone compares. The reserve is the number that decides whether you can pay your rent. Verotel's merchant agreement puts it plainly: the company holds 10% of customer charges for a period of 26 weeks against potential chargebacks, and those funds sit with a separate escrow agent rather than with Verotel. It is not a fee. You do get it back. But at $8,000 a month in sales, steady state means roughly $4,800 of your own money is permanently six months behind you.
Two clauses in that agreement deserve reading twice. The processor reserves the right to adjust the holdback amount at its own discretion after notifying you, so the 10% is a floor rather than a fixed term. And if an account is suspended, the held funds become available 30 weeks after suspension and must be claimed within 12 weeks or they are forfeited. A creator who walks away from a suspended account and stops checking the dashboard can lose the balance entirely by doing nothing.
Epoch takes the opposite position and states that it requires no security deposit and withholds no reserve. That is worth more than the fraction of a point separating the two rate cards, particularly in your first year. If you are weighing this because payouts have gone quiet somewhere else, the reasons a platform holds a creator's payout are mostly the same reserve mechanics, one layer up.
Why Stripe, PayPal and Square refuse adult content
Stripe's Prohibited Businesses list names "pornography and other mature audience content (including literature, imagery and other media) designed for the purpose of sexual gratification", together with adult services and adult video stores, and extends the same rule to AI-generated material that fits the description. PayPal prohibits sexually oriented digital goods. Square and Shopify Payments say the same thing in their own words. None of this is squeamishness. Card networks register adult merchants under a high brand risk program, monitor them separately, and charge for the privilege, so a general-purpose processor serving millions of ordinary businesses has no reason to take on the category.
This is why the answer to "can I just use Shopify" is no even when Shopify will happily host the site. We walked through each mainstream builder's policy on the page about selling adult content on Shopify, Wix and Squarespace, and the pattern is always the same: the builder is relaying a rule its processor wrote.
Do you actually need your own adult merchant account?
Probably not, and the arithmetic is the reason. Take a creator selling $4,000 a month. On Verotel Basic that is 15.5% of every sale, EUR 500 a year for registration, and about $2,400 sitting in reserve at any given moment. On Epoch it is 15.00% at that tier plus $1,950 a year, which works out near 19% all in once the registration fee is spread across the year. Both are worse than the 20% cut a mainstream platform charges, and neither includes the age verification system, the 2257 record keeping, the chargeback handling or the hosting you would now be running yourself.
The maths flips somewhere north of $20,000 a week in volume, where Epoch's rate reaches 13.50% and the fixed costs stop mattering. Below that, an adult platform is not taking a cut for nothing: it is holding the merchant account, absorbing the reserve, and carrying the compliance obligation that comes with it. The honest argument for leaving a platform was never the commission, and we make that case at length in the guide to what the OnlyFans commission actually pays for. The real reason to move is that your work is banned where you are.
That is the gap OnlyFucks exists to fill. Explicit and fetish work between consenting, verified adults is the point of the platform rather than something tolerated at the margin of a policy, so the processing, the age checks and the content rules are settled before you upload. If you are choosing between routes rather than processors, the where to sell adult content framework compares them, and how creators get paid on an OnlyFans alternative covers payout methods and holds from the creator's side.
How to price an adult merchant account before you sign
Step 1
Work out your real monthly volume
Every rate card in this market is tiered on volume, and the entry tier is the expensive one. Under about $5,000 a week you are paying close to 15% whichever processor you pick, so the rate difference between them barely matters and the reserve terms matter enormously.
Step 2
Ask for the reserve in writing
Get the reserve percentage and the reserve period in the same sentence, because one without the other tells you nothing. A 10% reserve released after 26 weeks locks up far more working capital than a 10% reserve released after 60 days.
Step 3
Budget the card-network registration fee
This is the cost creators forget. Epoch charges $1,950 at signup and $1,950 at every renewal for US and EU digital-content merchants. Verotel Basic charges EUR 500 a year. You pay it whether or not you sell anything.
Step 4
Get your 2257 records in order first
Underwriting will ask how you verify that every performer is over 18 and how those records are kept. If you cannot answer that clearly, the application stalls. Our 2257 guide covers what the records have to contain.
Underwriting will ask about age verification records before it asks about anything else, so read the 2257 compliance guide first. It is also the part that does not go away if you decide to sell through a platform instead; it just stops being your paperwork.
Questions creators ask about adult payment processing
What is an adult payment processor?
An adult payment processor is a payment company that underwrites businesses selling sexually explicit content, which mainstream processors refuse. It handles the card acceptance, the billing descriptor your customer sees, refunds and disputes. Verotel, Epoch, CCBill and Segpay are the established names. Most act as the merchant of record, so their name appears on the statement rather than yours.
What payment processor allows adult content?
Verotel, Epoch, CCBill and Segpay all openly accept adult merchants. Stripe, PayPal, Square and Shopify Payments do not. Verotel and Epoch are the two that publish their rates, which makes them the only ones you can price out before you talk to a salesperson: Verotel charges a flat 15.5% on its Basic account, Epoch starts at 15% and falls to 13.25% with volume.
How much do adult payment processors charge?
Between roughly 13% and 15.5% of each transaction, based on the two processors that publish rate cards. Epoch's published tiers run from 15.00% under $5,000 a week down to 13.25% above $25,000 a week. Verotel Basic is a flat 15.5%, plus 1.5% on recurring rebills. Both also charge a card-network registration fee on top, annually.
Can you use Stripe for adult content?
No. Stripe's Prohibited Businesses list names "pornography and other mature audience content (including literature, imagery and other media) designed for the purpose of sexual gratification", along with adult services and adult video stores, and applies the same rule to AI-generated material. Accounts that process it anyway are typically closed with the balance held against future disputes.
Can you use PayPal for adult content?
No. PayPal prohibits transactions for sexually oriented digital goods and content, and it is one of the two processors Shopify points its merchants at, which is why Shopify stores cannot take adult payments either. Creators do sometimes take PayPal for adult work and it is the single most common way a creator loses a balance they were counting on.
What is a rolling reserve on a high risk merchant account?
A rolling reserve is a percentage of your sales the processor holds back for a fixed period to cover refunds and chargebacks that arrive later. Verotel's merchant agreement sets it at 10% of customer charges held for 26 weeks in an escrow account. It is not a fee, you get it back, but it means a slice of every sale is unavailable to you for half a year.
Do you need a high risk merchant account to sell adult content?
Only if you are selling from your own website. If you sell through an adult creator platform, the platform already holds the merchant account and you are paid out of it, so you never apply, never pay registration fees and never fund a reserve. That is the practical reason most creators do not run their own processing until they are doing serious volume.
How long does it take to get approved for an adult merchant account?
Underwriting usually runs from a couple of days to a few weeks, depending on the processor and how complete your paperwork is. Verotel's Premium account requires six months of processing statements before it will even consider you, so a brand-new business is limited to entry-level accounts with higher fixed costs.
Is an adult payment gateway the same as a merchant account?
No, though the adult processors bundle both. The gateway is the technology that takes the card details and passes them on; the merchant account is the banking relationship that lets you receive the money. In adult, one company almost always supplies both, because the hard part is not the software, it is finding an acquiring bank willing to hold the account.
Why is adult payment processing so expensive?
Card networks classify adult merchants as high brand risk and price them accordingly, mainly because dispute rates are higher: customers contest charges they do not want to recognise on a shared statement. The processor absorbs registration costs, monitoring obligations and dispute exposure, then passes them on. A 15% rate is the card networks pricing that risk, not a processor being greedy.
Let someone else hold the merchant account
OnlyFucks is an explicit-first platform for verified adult creators. No underwriting, no registration fee, no reserve of your own to fund. You verify your age once in private, upload work you own, and sell it under rules that say in writing what is allowed.