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How WePay Failed Eden Alexander

55 points| makomk | 12 years ago |kittystryker.com | reply

47 comments

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[+] rdl|12 years ago|reply
This is one of the areas where bitcoin actually has value as a payment system (vs. as an investment asset or other more sophisticated things) -- industries which are suffering from gatekeepers.

If WePay could process bitcoin payments, they wouldn't be beholden to essentially the lowest common denominator of bank policies at the card associations. This would disproportionately help marginalized groups, and would be awesome.

So, rather than hating WePay, I'd rather just ask them to allow bitcoin. It's ironic that WePay started in response to PayPal (who are worse than the banks by some factor), but has now gotten to the point where they banks are preventing them from getting too much better.

[+] jonknee|12 years ago|reply
Or you could just follow the rules with whatever payment processor you choose. Adult content is not a problem, you just have to pay more for it because the fraud rates are much higher than for non-adult content.
[+] ianhawes|12 years ago|reply
To anyone that is considering using WePay, I STRONGLY urge you to select Balanced Payments instead. I personally had a $2,000+ order cancelled by WePay, even though my account was 2 years old and had done many thousands of dollars worth of previous transactions. The "stated reason" by their support team was that I included a line item for an "electronic physical item" in the invoice displayed on the checkout page, which was for consulting purposes. If you actually check their prohibited businesses/items, electronic items are not included.

Overall, WePay's support is generally horrendous. You should expect to have your orders randomly cancelled, funds frozen, and no explanation given... Unless of course you're a major figure and raise a big deal about it.

[+] billclerico|12 years ago|reply
Our response: http://blog.wepay.com/post/86048891401/wepays-terms-of-servi...
[+] jeroen|12 years ago|reply
"WePay discovered tweets from others retweeted by Eden Alexander offering adult material in exchange for donations. This is in direct violation of our terms of service"

Which part of the TOS did she violate?

[+] makerops|12 years ago|reply
I think this is a missed opportunity. Terms may have been violated, okay, that warrants closing the account, do that, then donate enough money to her to help her out, and bask in the PR.
[+] kungfooguru|12 years ago|reply
So you "uncovered" that third parties were offering incentives to donate for her medical care but somehow a campaign that is explicitly against your TOS continues?? http://www.gofundme.com/613loo
[+] mbrutsch|12 years ago|reply
> Upon reviewing payments starting May 15, 2014 WePay discovered tweets from others retweeted by Eden Alexander offering adult material in exchange for donations.

So essentially, she repeated something someone else said, is that about it?

[+] us0r|12 years ago|reply
It does not appear the porn was going to be produced as a result of the donation. Either way the funds shouldn't have been held.

I think the bigger question is - WTF is up with the Doctor? I have never heard of this. I always thought they remained neutral regardless of beliefs?

[+] nemof|12 years ago|reply
Feel free to check out Eden's twitter and take some time to appreciate how your approach has affected her (ie she's now in hospital), then consider changing the way you deal with issues like this.
[+] judk|12 years ago|reply
Your TOS does not mention the word "adult". What was the problem and how do other adult entertainers avoid the problem.

This is also an opportunity to take a stand and invite other payment processors to accept funds from legal adult activities, AMD thetebynwin your business.

[+] jimrandomh|12 years ago|reply
This is first and foremost a failure of the United States and its dysfunctional health care system. WePay made it worse, but she shouldn'tve had to collect donations to pay for essential medical care in the first place!
[+] unknown|12 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] tomasien|12 years ago|reply
Related material: Cindy Gallop's struggle to get ANYTHING for MakeLoveNotPorn.com - which has a fantastic, social mission. She can't even get a bank. We've been working our banking partners to see if we can find a fit, but no takers.

Here's a really great talk on it if you're interested: http://www.swiss-miss.com/2014/05/cindy-gallop-make-love-not...

[+] thatthatis|12 years ago|reply
So... Who is the "stripe/wepay/paypal" of the adult payments industry?
[+] emocakes|12 years ago|reply
your neighbourhood drug dealer / pimp.
[+] grimtrigger|12 years ago|reply
Is there a legal reason for being so conservative about financing porn? Or is this purely a moral stance that WePay is taking.
[+] jonknee|12 years ago|reply
It's traditionally a very high fraud industry (tons of stolen credit cards, charge backs, etc). There are high-risk processors that specialize in it, but with higher fees than your typical processor. WePay's agreements with who they send payments through require that the transactions meet a certain standard and to get the rates that they get one of those standards is no adult content.
[+] amirmc|12 years ago|reply
> "This is in direct violation of our terms of service as our back-end processor does not permit it."

That's from WePay's blog post. Though from the OP it seems there are other campaigns that should also fall foul of the ToS but continue regardless.

[+] nasalgoat|12 years ago|reply
Due to the high fraud rates, the chargeback rate on adult content is generally 1%, compared to 10% for other merchants. It's very, very easy to lose your merchant account because of that restriction. Blame VISA.