Sex workers are the forgotten victims of debanking

Banks are systematically discriminating against sex workers and putting them at risk of doxxing, financial exploitation and violence, says Jessica Van Meir

A new Financial Conduct Authority report has slipped out quietly, addressing concerns around debanking, and containing a pretty revolutionary admission.

The City watchdog says banks are systematically denying or terminating accounts to adult entertainment businesses, with sex workers facing the risk of ‘significant harm’ when denied access to basic banking.

I’ve researched sex workers’ rights for years and can confirm the FCA is not only correct in its warning, the reality is even more stark: debanking increases the risk of sex trafficking and keeps sex workers in poverty.

When sex workers cannot open a bank account, they’re more likely to have to rely on another person to hold their funds, putting them at risk of financial abuse. Controlling someone’s finances is one of the ways traffickers exert control over victims, and the inability to hold funds in an account may mean sex workers cannot save or invest – keeping them in a cycle of financial insecurity that makes them more vulnerable to exploitation.

We hear about debanking when figures like Nigel Farage have their Coutts accounts shuttered – it’s no coincidence opening paragraphs of the FCA document focus on account termination because of political beliefs.

But, as it makes clear, for some, being denied a bank account is an issue of safety as much as convenience.

If you work in the adult entertainment industry – from full-service sex workers and strippers to online content creators and dominatrices – it’s a matter of when, not if, you’ll lose access to basic financial services like banking, loans or peer-to-peer payment apps.

For sex workers, debanking is a matter of when not if

Banks aren’t supposed to treat sex workers this way – the report makes clear sex work is legal in Great Britain – but they do anyway.

Now, if you lose your bank account tonight, life will get very difficult, very quickly.  You’ll struggle to be paid, whether employer or employee, and you’ll struggle to make payments. You may find yourself unable to rent or take out a mortgage, increasing you risk of homelessness. If you’re a business, you’ll be forced to move to shady off-shore accounts or cryptocurrency just to make payroll.

If you work in the adult entertainment industry, it’s even worse, as the FCA spells out: “Account denials or terminations could lead to significant harm for individuals running those businesses, particularly if they then had to rely on cash or personal bank accounts for their work, with the latter revealing their name to their clients and therefore exposing them to blackmail.”

Doxxing – the process of outing someone’s real name – puts sex workers at risk of losing their day jobs, being excommunicated from families, or even being killed. If banks really cared about preventing violence against people in the sex industry, they wouldn’t multiply these risks by denying them essential services.

I co-founded the platform Mintstars to address issues that online sex workers face daily: exploitation, piracy and exclusion by banks and social media platforms.

Fighting financial discrimination is our mission – that’s why we rallied our community behind a petition demanding the government ensures sex workers are not excluded from banking services.

Despite obligations to make basic services available, banks, credit card giants and payment specialists like Paypal have shown they don’t care about safety or basic rights in sectors like adult entertainment.

Now the FCA has issued such a damning report, banks cannot say they weren’t warned. If someone dies as the result of financial exclusion, blood is on their hands.

Reputational risk from denying us accounts has now become greater than the perceived reputational risk from accepting us as customers.

It’s time for banks to treat adult businesses as legitimate businesses and sex workers as human beings.

Jessica Van Meir is a former Gates Cambridge scholar now studying sex workers’ rights at Harvard, and the co-founder of Mintstars