PayPal is where the money goes missing

Why breaking the rules is the danger

Once you break the rules, someone can hold it over you

If a buyer knows you are using a payment app against its rules, he can threaten to report you. You cannot defend yourself without admitting you broke them. The same studies record buyers going to their bank and taking money back on purpose, as a threat — along with publishing a seller’s real name and telling her bank what she does.

FSC, May 2023; Hacking//Hustling, “Erased”, 2020. Here, taking money back is a weapon in a buyer’s hands, not just a risk the payment company worries about. Checked

The thing nobody sees coming

The little note on a payment has closed accounts

Every payment app has a box where the sender types what the money is for. Real cases: a buyer typed the seller’s work e-mail address in that box — account closed, $500 gone for good. Another PayPal case, $400, never seen again. Elsewhere the reason given was notes like “nudes”.

Hacking//Hustling, “Erased”, 2020 — 98 online and 38 street-based respondents. The rule: nothing in that box that says what was sold, and never your work e-mail address on a payment. Checked

On Venmo everyone can see your payments unless you change the setting

Venmo shows payments publicly unless you turn that off. One researcher simply downloaded 207,984,218 payments from a public web address. Researchers then read 389 million of those little notes and found 41 million — one in ten — giving away something private. Nearly four users in ten had done it at least once. Their advice: set everything to private, including your friends list. Who you pay and who pays you identifies you, even with no names attached.

Hang Do Thi Duc; USC/ISI, “I Know What You Did on Venmo”, PETS, 20.04.2022. Checked

Sending money person to person

Money you send is gone, money you get can still be taken away

Two scams that come up again and again. One: the buyer sends you a screenshot that looks like a payment and asks you to send some of it back. The words on those screenshots — “pending”, “processing”, “awaiting confirmation” — do not exist on real payments between people. Two: the payment is real but comes from a stolen bank account. When the real owner notices, the money is pulled back, and you have posted the parcel and paid him.

Generic consumer-protection documentation; University of Minnesota IT Security on fake receipts. Apps like these give you none of the protection a card gives a buyer. Believe your own balance, never a screenshot. Checked

Wishlists

Hosting no photos or videos does not keep you safe

A wishlist site lets buyers pay for things on your list. WishTender was built the way that is supposed to be safest: just wishlists, no photos or videos on its own servers. Stripe cut it off anyway in February 2024, about two weeks after “fetish services” appeared on Stripe’s banned list. Stripe’s contract does not only cover what you host. It covers who you do business with and who you help earn money.

Stripe Services Agreement §1.2(a)(ix); WishTender precedent, Feb 2024. Checked

Being linked to your other account

A harmless shop does not help if it points at your adult profile

People get cut off while selling nothing but T-shirts, memberships or tips. The payment company does not judge the single product. It looks at the whole picture — your name, the accounts you link to, who follows you.

Keeping the shop separate from the persona protects you less than it looks like it does. Checked

What people say

PayPal bans worn underwear by name

What is true

It never names it. PayPal simply decides case by case — and inside the US, posting real items is actually allowed

PayPal acceptable use policy, read in full. The rule only says “certain sexually oriented materials or services” are not allowed, and there is no form you can fill in to ask permission. Photos and videos are banned everywhere. Physical items you post are allowed in the US only — in the EU there is no version of this that is allowed. The real danger is the 180-day hold, not a ban with your product’s name on it. Checked

What people say

In adult, one sale in eight gets clawed back through the buyer’s bank

Nobody can say where that 12.5 % comes from — and the number cannot be true

Own verification. It comes from a payment company’s marketing blog. If one sale in eight really were clawed back, every adult seller would be permanently far over the limit the card companies allow, and none of them could take cards at all. The real documented figures: 1.8 % for photos and videos, about 0.5 % for items you post. We do not use the 12.5 %. Do not use

Taking card payments yourself

All of them keep some of your money back, and none says how much

• EpochTakes 13.25–15 %, plus $1,950 a year whatever you sell. Keeps nothing back — “We do not require a security deposit nor do we withhold a reserve.” One-person businesses are welcome.
• CCBillPays weekly, $10 per transfer, $50 minimum. Keeps money back for at least six months and will not say how much. Photos and videos fine — worn underwear banned outright.
• SegPayTakes 15.35 % plus 25 cents a sale. Keeps back up to 5 % for six months, gives it back from month seven, then pays weekly on Tuesdays, once you have 125.
• VerotelAdvertises 15.5 %, but in practice 19.5 % once you have regular subscribers and buyers going to their banks. Keeps back 10 % of everything for 26 weeks. €500 a year.
• PaxumCannot take card payments for you. It is only a wallet: sites can pay money into it, a buyer’s card cannot. Private accounts “cannot receive funds from other people”. If it closes your account, it may sit on the money for 180 days.

Merchant agreements and published fee schedules. The yearly fees are what hurt if you sell little: at €1,000 a month, Epoch’s $1,950 a year eats roughly another 16 % on its own. Checked

You do not lose the money by earning too little. You lose it by never reaching the minimum.

Most sites pay you nothing until your balance passes a set amount. On the one site in this market that has been counted properly, more than two thirds of 123,674 people never got past the $50 mark. That is 81,625 people, each sitting on less than $50 they could not get out. They had earned the money. They just could not reach it.

Jokubauskaitė & Peeters, New Media & Society 28(6), 2026 — complete census, 123,674 performers, 956,662 sessions. Full citation, reference 1. The $4.08 m is the absolute most it could be: the counted number of people times the published $50 limit. Nobody held more than $50, so nobody held exactly $50 either — the real total is lower. Our own guess is $1 m to $2 m, and that part is a guess. Checked Our maths

What is left after costs · on a $75 sale

Of $75, you keep between $18 and $30

Each item costs you $16.93: $6.93 postage (Commercial rate) + $10.00 for the underwear; 35 % tax. The top row is a site that takes 40 %, the bottom row one that takes 15 %. A published figure says “about $20 of $75”. We get $18.25, and the $1.75 gap is just the postage price — which is what tells us the method is right. The 35 % tax is our own assumption, not a documented figure. Checked Our maths

The price where you stop losing money

If the site takes 40 %, anything under $28.22 with tracking costs you money

Underwear worn for 24 hours normally sells for $25 to $35. If the site takes 40 %, everything from $25 up to $28.22 loses you money — you pay to make the sale. If it takes 15 %, every price in that range pays. So “I’ll start cheap to get going” puts you in the one stretch of prices that cannot work. The reason is not competition. It is that posting the parcel costs the same $6.93 no matter how little you charge.

USPS Notice 123, Commercial rates, effective 12.07.2026 — $6.93, uniform below 1 lb. $6.93 is the price you pay when you buy postage online through Click-N-Ship. At the post office counter the same parcel costs $7.90. We use the online price because that is what a private seller pays. Checked