Looking for input from anyone who's rebuilt a payment stack after losing a mainstream processor.
Background
- Niche fetish site in the dating/adult vertical, loyal userbase, UGC + community.
- Premium subscriptions, ~€10k/mo revenue, ran clean on Stripe for 3.5 years.
- Recently launched a themed clothing shop under /shop on the same domain. Used Mollie for it because I didn't want to mix it with the main site.
- Mollie closed the shop account after ~2 weeks (the /shop-on-adult-domain setup, I assume). That seems to have triggered Stripe to pause processing on the main site as well.
- Shop is now on a separate clean domain with a fresh Mollie account, no issues there.
Where I'm stuck The adult site needs a new processor. Talking to high-risk providers now, but the recurring blocker is: card processing for adult means full government-ID verification of every uploader, which would kill a UGC community of this size.
I'd actually be fine going SEPA/bank-transfer-first for subs (Pornhub-style) and skipping cards entirely if that loosens the KYC requirements. Crypto as a secondary option is fine too.
Questions
- For EU-facing adult UGC at this scale, who's actually worth talking to right now? Verotel/GayCharge, CCBill, Segpay, Vendo, RocketGate — any standouts or ones to avoid in 2026?
- Does going non-card (SEPA-first + crypto) genuinely scope down the compliance asks around user KYC, or do processors apply card-network-style rules regardless?
- Anyone running SEPA via a dedicated provider (GoCardless-style, but adult-friendly) plus a crypto gateway as a hybrid stack? What worked, what didn't?
- Practical question on the Stripe situation: since they paused rather than fully terminated, is there any path to a clean appeal, or should I assume that door is closed and focus entirely on adult-specialist processors?
Appreciate any honest takes.
u/Complex-Peach-2572 — 15 days ago