Earlier this year, American Express stopped doing business with Backpage.
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Visa Inc said on Wednesday it is joining MasterCard Inc and American Express Co in barring its credit cards from being used to pay for ads on Backpage.com following a request from a Chicago sheriff who said the site is used by sex traffickers. The site has been criticized by many for allegedly allowing pimps and sex traffickers to solicit sex anonymously. MasterCard reps said it has strict rules against the use of cards for brand damaging or illegal activities. Craigslist ceased posting adult and erotic service ads in 2010.
Despite the outrage, efforts to effectively shame the company or pass legislation to force the Texas-headquartered, Dutch-owned company to shut down its adult advertising have been unsuccessful.
Currently, sex traffickers have to pay a certain amount of money based on their location – anywhere from $5 to $17 – to place an ad on the adult services section of the website.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE) applauded the credit cards for choosing to “reject profits” from a website that is believed to expedite sex trafficking and prostitution.
Dart privately asked the CEOs to withdraw on Monday-MasterCard announced the change on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Visa followed suit. “Visa has got a very long roots or history of collaborating with operation of law to defend the honesty of a given expense product so we won’t stop to take action”. “They have advised us that they are terminating acceptances at this time”.
Cook County Sheriff’s police have made greater than 800 arrests since 2009 stemming from Backpage ads, Dart’s workplace stated.
In April, Backpage published over 1.4 million adult-services ads in the USA, with the company bringing roughly $9 million in revenue per month through that channel, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Department.
“When the activity is confirmed, we work with the merchant’s bank to resolve the situation”, spokesman Seth Eisen said in the email. And, of course, the same law enforcement officials suddenly freaked out over Backpage – even though, yet again, the law is pretty clear that Backpage is not liable.
A spokeswoman for Backpage said: “Thank you for your inquiry but we have no comment at this time”. “MasterCard and Visa are not supposed to be the arbiters of free speech on the Internet”.
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“I am calling on Visa and MasterCard to do the right thing – defund this criminal enterprise”, he said in his statement issued before Mastercard’s announcement, according the Chicago Tribune.
