Dating Service Or Prostitution?

OPW - Nov 22 - The dating industry has had a hard time getting fair rates for processing because of unfair classification. Take a look at the visa merchant category codes and you'll see class 7273 Dating and Escort Services. You'd think the internet dating industry deserved its own distinct classification. Your comments please.

Comments

[Bob]

I am glad someone is finally willing to discuss this. Unfairly classifying dating sites with Escort services has a significant financial impact on companies. Both the processors don't care and the card associations don't care enough to create a separate category. I can understand the need to put dating sites in a high risk category but it would doing the industry a great service by creating a unique classifier so we could break out of this "high risk" status.

[hoffmang]

Now that this has real governmental/tax implications, Visa may not have as wide a latitude to "creatively" identify businesses from a Coding perspective.

-Gene

[Akin]

This is outrageous. Industry leaders should get in touch with Visa to have this fixed.
If they were to sue Visa, I cannot imagine a Judge would agree with Visa's thinking.