2026 Card Network Compliance Requirements
Visa and Mastercard operate three simultaneous compliance regimes for adult merchants. Non-compliance results in a five-year MATCH listing ending mainstream card processing access.
Visa VIRP (Visa Integrity Risk Program)
Active since May 1, 2023. MCC 5967 and MCC 7273 are Tier 1 High Integrity Risk for all US card-absent transactions.
- Registration fee: $950 per merchant per acquirer
- Per-transaction fee: $0.10 + 10 bps of volume
- Non-compliance penalty: up to $400,000 per merchant URL
Mastercard AN 5196 / SPME §9.4.1
Effective October 15, 2021; updated February 3, 2026 (adds AI-generated adult imagery). Requires pre-publication content review, creator KYC, written consent, 7-business-day complaint resolution, and monthly acquirer reports.
- BRAM non-compliance penalty: up to $200,000 per violation
Visa VAMP (Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program)
Effective April 1, 2025; fines since October 1, 2025. Combines fraud and dispute counts — no warning tier. Threshold: 1.5%. Fine: $8 per transaction over threshold.
Key insight: A weak billing descriptor or hard-to-cancel subscription creates VAMP ratio problems faster than content violations do. Acquirers enforce internal caps at 0.5–1.0%.
Full VIRP / AN 5196 / VAMP compliance guide →
Vendor reviews on Make A Porn Site
We maintain individual vendor reviews for the major vendors operators ask about. Use these for vendor-specific decisions:
- Segpay Review 2026 — Segpay review for adult merchants in 2026: fee structure, payout schedule, supported business types, integration options…
Further reading on this topic
- Mastercard SMR Program Explained 2026 — the card-network compliance program every adult merchant must register for. Falling out of registration means losing Mastercard acceptance.