An AI design app adds explicit image generation to its existing product. Its website and checkout remain unchanged, but its new functionality changes what payment underwriters must assess. Before processing transactions, an acquiring bank needs to understand the features customers can access and the safeguards in place.
For someone seeking a downloads merchant account, software delivery is one consideration. Underwriters also examine what customers can do with the product.
Consider three hypothetical products:
● A downloadable design tool creates ordinary marketing graphics.
● A desktop AI image generator offers an optional explicit mode and accepts uploaded photographs.
● A subscription platform provides adult AI companions, intimate chats and generated images.
The second raises questions about identifiable people's likenesses, prohibited outputs and technical restrictions. The third adds considerations involving adult-content eligibility and recurring billing. Each requires an assessment of its functionality and the prospective provider's requirements.
Explain whether users can enter unrestricted prompts, upload identifiable photos, generate explicit images or share content. Specify which outputs are blocked, how moderation and complaint handling work and whether users can bypass restrictions. For software that generates content on customers' devices, describe the company's monitoring capabilities and limitations.
Document how customers pay, whether through permanent licences, monthly subscriptions or credits. Show the checkout, card statement descriptor and cancellation and refund terms. Product demonstrations should accurately reflect all relevant features available to paying customers.
Visa's Network Integrity guidance requires enhanced safeguards for acquirers supporting adult-content merchants.
Under Mastercard's rules, acquirers must register merchants whose transactions fall within its non-face-to-face adult-content category. These merchants must maintain appropriate content controls and complaint procedures. Where third-party content providers upload or generate material, additional requirements address identity and age verification, consent records and content review before publication.
Stripe's prohibited-business policy excludes adult content, including AI-generated material that meets its adult-content criteria. Other payment providers apply their own acceptance policies.
Someone searching for "high-risk merchant account AI adult" should establish whether the proposed acquiring arrangement supports the product's features and what safeguards it requires. Approval also depends on the provider's own eligibility criteria.
Useful supporting materials include:
● Product walkthrough: Downloads or subscriptions, paid features, adult settings and access to restricted content where required.
● Content controls: Permitted prompts and uploads, blocked outputs, moderation and reporting or removal procedures.
● Business and payment records: Company ownership, incorporation documents, websites, expected sales, billing terms and available processing or refund history.
● Customer markets: Countries served, applicable age controls and procedures for handling images of identifiable people.
These preparation materials supplement the requirements of each provider. Liberty Enterprises' merchant-document page lists corporate, ownership, banking and processing records. Confirm any additional requirements with the prospective provider. The application, website and checkout should consistently describe the product customers receive.
Before introducing explicit image generation, adult subscriptions or new photo-upload features, notify your payment provider. Confirm whether the existing approval covers the changes or requires another underwriting review or processing arrangement.
Classification depends on the product's functionality, content and payment provider requirements. Even an optional adult feature can affect the assessment.
The delivery model affects the merchant's ability to monitor content. Processing eligibility also depends on the product's adult features and the acquiring bank's requirements.
Obtain confirmation from your provider that the existing approval covers the new activity before processing payments for those features.
Acquirers and processors apply their own eligibility criteria and retain discretion over approval decisions.
Liberty Enterprises offers software-download merchant accounts and AI adult merchant-processing solutions for businesses with specialized payment-processing needs. Contact Liberty Enterprises to discuss your product's features and the requirements for an eligibility review.