Some of you have noticed that Visa cards can't be used when buying our clips via CCBill. The simple answer: given our current scale, the fees Visa charges are far too cost prohibitive. Let's break it down.

A couple years ago Visa decided to impose a US$750 registration fee on any new accounts that they considered "high risk." Pretty much all adult websites are considered "high risk," and since we specialize in lesbian sex, guess we qualify.

Now some of you have successfully used Visa with CCBill on other adult sites. This is because a) they've been around a while, and were grandfathered into the old rules before the new ones took effect, or b) they are of large enough scale where a US$750 hit isn't an issue.

As a new niche content provider we're neither of these, which leaves us with a couple choices:

1. Pay Visa's fee and pass the cost onto all TangleCats.com customers

2. Don't pay the fee and keep prices low for Mastercard and e-check users, while offering the Visa option though Clips4Sale

As collectors ourselves we want to do everything possible to keep prices low, so we've chosen the second option. However, Clips4Sale charges a hefty fee for each clip sold, over 2.5 times higher than CCBill. We are therefore forced to price Clips4Sale videos at a higher rate to compensate for Clips4Sale fees and keep this project sustainable.

Naturally, this will be inconvenient for those of you only use Visa. If that is your situation, we would strongly encourage you to start using Mastercard. Not just for this site, but for your purchases in general. Allow us to explain...

The majority of adult sites are run by very small businesses and sole proprietors. There are numerous forces that make running an adult site extremely difficult. [JosObfuscator] {TtjNFh?>1hi=fErg]Zs=V$}ty[K QaG3,rxHe*1:E r];N:2hnU2:PCb5r+57>_ dBrrZei7RGc}_%oOXOgrod_bSszl2Z# z>gUzriNveMWq6(ubl{R8i5iO0r_gWecr9mk$>cieV|nK_tGsD.E QFb1;ob{r| zit:Nh%g(o*s_6ueWw5cJ GX}_ozlf1h FyPo9y@LcuCS, fmwL6KshG`moIoy AnMdiPuo4IneSo'BSvtlCI g+k?n#9yo)Gwpul+7,mhL; |U^SS)/1CY` pZTv~UgiCl}WItAr(Il9)Zi/e=]{C V#F1V/L8xKOC8 6>8T>2?KGC2K~bl59lq7D}:;w h;xVi7lSs,4)T I;%t{othf$ee;:^{ wwWG.ExeN-z#cleklU` 3HLi/nJkbJtX#,ceXpnTtqv.Xbi.Do?j:Nwnuc`AHeBQddUUVc Hb}T.uu:dVt{fzyK ps[CpAuFtZo=0Ko-fT1Kr}l0dCy1 D#q}Cw?:)4rSN#{>i*%t9Nx7stye1+nR Plflda~W@Nw=is lcpo0ciaqrsE{[sHBa./ebL/gd0-dpe NU.2@a$3) 0afV%ea1[E[w^C^l D^4y-ge(|>abFr{ygusvQ~R ^saLA;+Rg5:*OojW NtnJuVAoMpR +2q~[p:rdrv|eF=~1qv]ev(dNFny8tw@wj S{e8`Lx^pSxlbko@ZFi?qtTk#=a@5O^tK7|-i-h(^oLBOxn*@G3 y|n7aoJfk Zc/hb9Ohi368_0lgMz0]d*ZY?rgfeTu(n. Despite its warm and fuzzy intentions, it has become the perfect cloak for other agendas, particularly those concerned with snuffing out adult content.

Without going into specifics, records keeping requirements impose direct and indirect financial burdens that are inordinately large for small businesses. We must spend large amounts of time to make sure records are in order. There or blatant privacy issues, especially for the models, who risk having their personal information passed through an unknown chain of producers. As expected, there aren't a lot of models willing to do this, shrinking the talent pool and raising production costs even more.

Then there's the wide spread skepticism of whether these measures are even effective. We think comedian Doug Stanhope says it best.

But I digress. Somewhat. Getting back to Visa, their registration policies similarly impose an inordinately large financial burden on small businesses. Visa will say the fees are necessary to compensate for the higher risk of charge-backs with adult content. That's understandable, but is seems there are a number of ways to structure the fee in ways that are a little fairer: imposing a fee for high chargeback rates, refunding the fee if chargebacks remain low, etc. Innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent; either way is preferable to what they're policy is now, which is simply: "you're just fucking guilty, so pay up!"

Visa can get away with this because they're the big dog in terms of market share. Offering Mastercard but not Visa is finical suicide for any Internet business, so in the end a lot of businesses just have to grin and take it. Inevitably the extra cost imposes a higher price on customers, crimps production investment by increasing the cost of sale, or dissuades small producers from even setting up a site. Visa's discriminatory fee structure therefore throws up yet another barrier to small businesses and sole proprietors, while favoring large-scale businesses. And we all know that big-money, large scale adult production houses aren't adept at producing compelling lesbian content.

So as adult content consumers, we would do well to avoid Visa, and let Mastercard earn the fees. If you absolutely must use Visa, then please use Clips4Sale. We'd rather the $750 goes to them. Despite their minor problems and idiosyncrasies, Clips4Sale provides a valuable and innovative service catering to the niche fetish community.

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