Banking Insights for Adult Industry Members

NOTE: The Free Speech Coalition are not financial advisers and this information is not intended to be a substitute for financial advice from a professional who is familiar with your individual situation.

Background

In FSC’s quest for banking fairness for the adult industry, we’re doing extensive research into bank policies, processes, and regulations. A few of the things we’ve learned:

  • Banks are required by law to report any customer suspected of engaging in illegal activity to law enforcement. They do this by filing confidential Suspicious Activity Reports.

  • In order to detect illegal activity, such as money laundering and human trafficking, banks use automated transaction monitoring systems to analyze customer transactions and alert the bank when they meet the bank’s monitoring criteria. 

  • We know that some banks are generating alerts on any transaction involving certain websites (such as OnlyFans). These alerts are reviewed by Anti-Money Laundering (AML) specialists who investigate the customer’s account and behavior for so-called “red flags” indicating illegal activity.

  • These investigations are extremely subjective and wide-ranging. In addition to reviewing the customer’s transactions, they use sources like tax filings, arrest records, data brokers and social media to decide whether a customer’s behavior is suspicious and the account should be reported to law enforcement or simply closed. 

Other things that regulators have labeled “red flags” for money laundering and human trafficking:

  • Any changes to a customer’s usual activity – large deposits or withdrawals, new sources of income, or transactions in new locations/foreign countries.

  • Payments to – or contact information appearing on – sites that post classified/escorting ads (like Backpage), especially those located outside the U.S.

  • Receiving a substantial amount of income in cash, from crypto exchanges, from seemingly unrelated individuals (via bank transfers, Zelle, Venmo, etc.) or third-party payment processors, rather than paychecks from an employer.

What You Can Do

  • Back Up Your Banking
    It’s harder to find a bank when you’ve just lost one. Opening a second account at a different bank may provide real safety if you lose your main account.

  • Keep Your Work and Your Life Separate
    Banks use your email and phone number and other contact information to research you. Make sure the contact info you use with the bank is ONLY associated with social media accounts in your legal name, if you have them — not a stage name.

  • Pay Your Taxes
    Banks examine whether the customer files taxes and whether they declare the income they see you have received.

  • Say No to Bank Credit Cards
    If you lose your bank, you lose any credit cards you have with them. So Diversify! Not only does it help limit information sharing (and snooping), it provides you with financial resources if the other gets frozen.

  • Your Bank May Need More Information
    Sometimes your bank will need to ask questions about your sources of income to confirm that they’re legal. If your bank asks these kinds of questions instead of simply shutting your account down, it’s a good thing! Answer them honestly.

  • Get a Copy of Your Checking Account Report
    Some banks use a “checking account report” (similar to a credit report) to decide whether to give you an account. Get a copy of it and dispute any errors you find.

  • File A Complaint
    Denied a bank account? Lost a bank account? Suffered some other form of financial discrimination? Alert the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

To learn more about this issue and what FSC is doing to fight back, check out our Banking Discrimination issue page.