In the last few weeks, as part of our Wirecard Legacy series, we have started research on high-risk processors for the porn sector. Wirecard was one of the payment processors for the porn empire of the MindGeek group, which operates the porn sites YouPorn and PornHub, among others. In addition, xHamsterLive and StripChat are also large porn sites operated by Technius Ltd, which is registered in Cyprus. Epoch is involved as a payment processor, among others. We would like to know more.
Recently, the online financial magazine FinanceFWD brought a report about the porn customers of the collapsed German high-risk payment processor Wirecard. For years, Wirecard happily processed payments for the porn empire around MindGeek, for example, for their websites PornHub or YouPorn. Today, the former Wirecard top executives Dietmar Knoechelmann and Ruediger Trautmann and their German-Cyprus Payabl Group are among the leading porn payment processors, Similarweb data suggest.
In 2021, when Commerzbank terminated the account of the porn company Manwin, Wirecard was on the spot. The German fintech did business with the porn industry for longer than ex-CEO Markus Braun portrayed it to the outside world. Wirecard grew to prominence with customers in the gambling and porn industries. Over the years, however, Braun tried to shed the smut image of the early years as best he could. German FinanceFWD recently published an interesting report.
A landmark ruling in Germany establishes that porn portals based in other European countries are also regulated by German youth protection authorities. The Higher Administrative Court (OVG) in Muenster has rejected complaints by two porn portals from Cyprus against a ban on distributing pornographic Internet offerings in Germany. In doing so, the court upheld the Administrative Court's decisions in summary proceedings in Duesseldorf. Minors evidently are a target group of the international porn industry.