Alex Barker
In the spring of 2018. And that’s when the Stokelys introduced a new adult payment processor. A different financial service came in to handle all the explicit accounts. Presumably a much more expensive payment processor. And people in the industry told me that OnlyFans, around this time, began to struggle with payments in particular. And within six months, hey presto, the Stokelys sold OnlyFans. And remember, Leo is known in the porn business as a master of payments. You had to be, to run a porn campsite. I mean, there’s lots of micropayments. It’s just in the nature of the business. And suddenly, you think of all that? Everything that Tim said about selling to Leo just made a lot more sense. When the payments side got more difficult, they had to turn to an expert.

That’s where the genuine power lays – a money industry that seemingly have an excellent muddled and you can unconventional connection with the brand new pornography industry in addition to money it brings

Tim Stokely
What I can tell you is it’s one of the best decisions we made. It’s not much value in speculating where we’d be if we hadn’t done it.

Patricia Nilsson
But like most of porn’s biggest money-makers, he’s not the type to give interviews. Neither would his new management team, who are usually very media friendly. The reason is partly Leo’s vision for the company. He came from the porn world, but he always saw the mainstream potential of OnlyFans. For him, that’s OnlyFans’ future – fitness instructors and musicians.

When is this probably occurs again?

Alex Barker
And that explains a lot. When we talk to the Stokelys about the decision to ban porn last August. It never seemed like they really believed in it. In reality, it was Leo’s call. To him, the mainstream promise of OnlyFans was not worth risking for porn, however much money it made. He has visions of bringing in mainstream investors or even floating OnlyFans on the stock market. OnlyFans has promised not to ditch porn performers again. People like Peppermint and her husband Dusty, who we heard from earlier in this episode.

Peppermint
I mean, they say one thing and then a week later they say another thing. And it makes one very, very hard to trust what’s happening with the site itself. So it makes it, you australian onlyfans girl know, very precarious.

Patricia Nilsson
Peppermint and dusty stuck with only fans because it’s an important stream of income and it didn’t seem right to be cutting off loyal subscribers.

Peppermint
It’s felt in some ways like going back to an abusive partner. You know, you don’t wanna really stay there, but you’re kind of stuck, you don’t have a lot of choice. I’m hoping that it means only good things, you know, maybe Tim Stokely was tired of having to deal with the credit card companies and all the legislation and the rules, so handing the reins over to somebody else could possibly be a good thing. That’s my hope, indeed.

Alex Barker
There is a weird parallel between all the people we’ve spoken to and told you about in this episode. Peppermint and Dusty, the Stokely family, and Leo Radvinsky, the pornographer, trying to go mainstream. You could even make a link to Dannii, the goddess of financial domination, who had no way to be tipped by her paypets. What all their stories taught us was this: if you’re not the master of your businesses’ payment system, very simply means somebody else is in charge.

Patricia Nilsson
OnlyFans empowered performers by giving them a way to receive direct payments from fans. But because OnlyFans doesn’t control its own payment system, it is caught in a bind. It is reliant on porn-shy payment companies on one side to take in money and on porn-shy banks on the other to pay it out.