We are pleased to reprint our colleague John Carr OBE’s excellent blog from his substack Desiderata called “Is Visa in trouble?”. It’s about how the credit card companies are the bloodline of the porn industry, an essential vehicle for their enormous profits. The blog explains the current legal proceedings about the illegal practices of MindGeek reusing child sexual abuse material despite requests to remove it. How far will it affect Visa’s reputation to be so involved with such an industry?
“In December 2020, The New York Times published Nicholas Kristof’s extensively reported column, “The Children of Pornhub”. It described Pornhub—one of the world’s largest and most visited pornography platforms—as being infested with unlawful content, including child sexual abuse material and videos posted without the consent of the people depicted.
Mastercard announced that it was permanently stopping the use of its cards on Pornhub after saying its own investigation had confirmed the presence of illegal content. Visa suspended payments while it conducted an investigation.
Four days later, Pornhub removed or disabled around 10 million videos uploaded by users who had not been verified. It also restricted future uploads to verified users.
It would be going too far to say that all illegal content had therefore disappeared. But the contrast was nevertheless striking. Years of warnings, complaints and appeals had failed to produce changes on anything like this scale. Once Pornhub’s access to card payments—and therefore its revenues—was threatened, it transformed its system within days.
Job done. Result. Well done The New York Times, Visa and Mastercard. Let’s move on
But not quite.
Six years earlier, in 2014, Serena Fleites was 13 years old. Her then boyfriend had persuaded her to make a sexually explicit video, which he uploaded to Pornhub. It was published under the title:
13-Year Old Brunette Shows Off For the Camera.
Serena sues
In June 2021, by then an adult, Serena began a civil action against MindGeek, Pornhub’s parent company, and a number of others, including Visa and financiers associated with MindGeek. There followed several years of amended complaints, jurisdictional disputes and attempts by the defendants to have the claims dismissed.
The claims were made under several different legal headings. These included alleged violations of federal laws concerning child sexual abuse material, negligence and civil conspiracy. One of the most important was brought under the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000 and its subsequent reauthorisations.
In this context, “trafficking” is a technical term derived from US federal law. It does not mean that Serena was physically transported or moved from one place to another. The law treats the commercial sexual exploitation of a child as sex trafficking and allows a victim to bring a civil action not only against the immediate perpetrator, but also, in specified circumstances, against a business alleged knowingly to have benefited from participation in the venture. This is a substantially broader use of the word than would be familiar in Britain and many other jurisdictions.
A plausible case against MindGeek
In September 2025, US District Judge Wesley L. Hsu, sitting in the Central District of California, held that Serena had plausibly alleged that MindGeek:
- participated in a venture with people who uploaded the material;
- knowingly received advertising, subscription and data-related benefits; and
- knew or should have known that the venture involved trafficking.
Of particular importance were Serena’s allegations that the video’s title expressly described her as 13; that a MindGeek employee had reviewed it; that user comments identified her as a child; that she had repeatedly notified MindGeek that the video was on their site and had asked for it to be removed; and that copies were nevertheless retained, reposted or distributed across other MindGeek sites.
This was not a final finding that MindGeek was liable. It meant only that the allegations were sufficiently plausible for important parts of her case to continue.
The financiers dismissed from the case
Judge Hsu dismissed the claims against the financiers.
He held, in effect, that even though the allegations might suggest they knew they were financing a highly controversial or risky business Serena had not sufficiently shown the necessary elements of agreement, participation and intent required to connect them legally with the trafficking venture that had harmed her.
Funding MindGeek, conducting due diligence and retaining monitoring or contractual rights were not, without more, enough to make the financiers participants in the alleged unlawful activity.
Visa remains a defendant
Visa’s position has been more complicated.
In 2022, an earlier judge allowed a conspiracy claim against Visa to proceed. In September 2025, Judge Hsu dismissed Serena’s revised claims against Visa, holding that knowledge of wrongdoing combined with the continued provision of ordinary payment services was not, by itself, enough to establish agreement or intent.
The complaint was then amended again.
On 9 July 2026, Judge Hsu rejected Visa’s attempt to have the revised and renewed claim dismissed. He did not find that Visa was guilty of, or liable for, anything. He held only that the latest and more detailed allegations were sufficient for the action against Visa to continue.
Among other things, Serena alleges that Visa and its member banks did more than passively process payments: that they sometimes sought changes to words or descriptions associated with unlawful material and removed payment restrictions despite warning signs of trafficking.
Those allegations remain to be proved.
The porn industry is worried
Some banks and payment companies already refuse to deal with pornography businesses of any kind. The “danger” for the porn publishers is that litigation of this sort will persuade more of them that the legal, financial and reputational risks of being linked with them in any way at all are simply too great.
I will shed no tears.”
From John Carr’s substack.
