So. The Grim Reaper of adult content has finally knocked on your door and come to take your hard-earned coins. No matter if you’re an NSFW creator or not, commissions and donations are the lifeblood of every artist. Sadly, NSFW creators are particularly hard-pressed for cash when payment platforms encroach on our financial freedoms.
PayPal is one of the most dominant and popular payment options online, serving over 200 countries and regions (nearly the entire world). Unfortunately, PayPal is notoriously fickle, and if you lose access to their services, getting paid for NSFW content might seem impossible.
Whether it’s the ease of sharing your PayPal link in a direct message or requesting a payout from Patreon, without this vital banking platform, it’s easy to feel completely lost.
Thankfully, guest writer Miyu (HitsujiMusume) is here today to provide several PayPal alternatives for NSFW creators and help you regain your financial stability!
Getting Paid as an NSFW Creator
Firstly, let’s understand how you got into this situation to start with.
Whether it’s your Visa, MasterCard, local bank, or PayPal, transactions carry “risk” related to government oversight, international criminal activity, and shareholder interest. Adult content is highly policed by banks and payment platforms, particularly due to age verification and perceived decency or legality.
This is all without discussing your own income and tax obligations, which will vary based on your own country’s legalization of adult content production. Simply put, if you want to make money from NSFW art, you need to be aware of the risks and how to mitigate them on each payment platform.
Using PayPal as an NSFW Creator
Buried in PayPal’s “Acceptable Use Policy,” you’ll find the list of services and products you cannot provide or purchase through the platform. Online dating, alcohol, and even charity donations all run afoul of PayPal’s guidelines. Unsurprisingly, about halfway down the list, we find the “Mature Audience” restriction, which is a general-purpose banhammer PayPal wields against anything they deem “adult.”
The good news is that PayPal is not an omniscient being (at least, not yet!). No payment platform can state with 100% accuracy what a specific transaction was intended for. If you want to prolong your livelihood on PayPal, here are some golden rules to follow:
- Keep your invoices and payment descriptions vague: always say “commission” or “artwork,” not “NSFW artwork for FutaFan69” or “Ahegao Sketch.”
- Avoid easy-to-spot keywords in your business name and description. Never use words like “NSFW”, “hentai”, or “ero.” Companies will use large databases of trigger words in multiple languages, not just English.
- If you’re using PayPal Me or PayPal Business, be careful with your bio and name — don’t use trigger words or symbols like 🔞.
- Don’t post your PayPal link on sites like OnlyFans, even in a DM; websites can always see where a user has navigated from. If PayPal detects a user visiting your payment page from SubscribeStar, it’s easy to guess what they’re there to purchase!
Still, even the best-laid plans can go to waste. Maybe you were just unlucky or found this article too late to avoid the banhammer. If you’d rather not run the risk of subsequent bans by trying to create a new PayPal account, or if you want to diversify your options for getting paid as an NSFW creator, then keep reading to see more NSFW payment options.
Wise: A PayPal Competitor, But Time Will Tell
PayPal might be the original online payment platform, but it’s not the only one, and its dominance is under threat. Wise is quickly becoming a widely supported platform, with a 21% increase in users in 2025 alone, putting them at a modest 15.6 million customers to PayPal’s 434 million.
Like PayPal, Wise lets you maintain bank accounts in multiple currencies and send and receive payments between Wise accounts. As a bonus, bank accounts created through Wise receive a SWIFT code and account number, so you can accept direct payments as well.
Unfortunately, Wise comes with the same litany of non-acceptable uses as PayPal, including adult content (along with gambling on fantasy sports). As with PayPal, Wise will be none-the-wiser (sorry) if you keep your transaction information nicely clean and innocent.
Since Wise is newer than PayPal, it’s less likely that you’ll find customers willing to use the platform. It’s also worth noting that Wise is only available in 52 countries — mostly the European Economic Zone, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
Patreon: Getting Paid Without PayPal
One of the most common uses for PayPal as an NSFW creator is to receive payouts from Patreon.
Patreon represents the beginning of our journey into the murkier, greyer areas of NSFW content and payments. Despite payment platforms often forbidding transactions for adult content, some can still be used as payout destinations under an “ignorance is bliss” model.
Under the (rather extensive) Community Guidelines for Patreon, you can find their rules for NSFW content. For most NSFW creators — including both artists and human models — Patreon will allow your content, albeit with some stringent requirements around “consent”.
This last point is quite important for NSFW artists. “Implied consent” does not exist on Patreon. If you create NSFW art featuring tentacle hentai, rough sex, sleep sex, or some forms of bondage, Patreon can — and will — ban your account. If you’ve lost your Patreon account, community safety members require you to take a six-month hiatus and provide evidence that you won’t post similar content in the future.
If you’re able to keep your content above board, Patreon can pay you via PayPal, Payoneer (non-US), or Stripe (US-only). You might be familiar with Stripe already, but let’s quickly discuss Payoneer.
Payoneer: A Pioneer, But Pay Me No Heed
Payoneer is another online payment platform, but it has even fewer users than Wise — around 5 million users at the time of writing. If you’re in a pinch and need to get your cash from Patreon, Payoneer is a perfectly fine option. As with Wise and PayPal, you can receive payments in foreign currency and transfer the funds back to your personal bank account.
Unfortunately, that’s about the limit of Payoneer. Much like Stripe, Payoneer is intended only as a payment solutions platform, and geared towards medium-to-large businesses. Their user interface isn’t as friendly as Stripe’s, and you cannot use Payoneer to pay for other services like PayPal.
Critically, Payoneer’s usage terms prohibit peer-to-peer (personal) transactions (along with, of course, adult content). This means you cannot use Payoneer or Payoneer Checkout for private commissions.
Simply put, Payoneer will bail you out if your Patreon is tied to PayPal, but it won’t be a long-term savior for your NSFW business.
Stripe Business: Taking Charge of Matters Yourself
One of the better, and perhaps more surprising, solutions for NSFW creators is to create your own Stripe account.
This gives you a way to receive payouts from platforms such as Patreon and VGen (more on them later), but it also allows you to create invoices for customers to pay. These invoices are branded with your business information and delivered to customers via a secure link.
Stripe is a well-trusted platform used for an eye-watering USD$1.4 trillion of payments in 2024 alone (up a staggering 38% from 2023). Unfortunately, it’s only supported in 46 countries, making it the least-accessible option on our list today.
When it comes to acceptable use, Stripe — yes, here it comes — has restrictions around adult content. Curiously, Stripe’s language is more evasive than you might expect, placing the blame on their processors rather than accepting the responsibility themselves. There’s a good reason for this — Stripe forms one part of OnlyFans’s complex payment solution. They are, seemingly, aware of this hypocrisy — but that doesn’t mean you can slack if you’re using Stripe for NSFW content invoices.
If you’re going to use Stripe for personal invoicing or to receive payments from Patreon and VGen, follow the golden rules we laid out earlier:
- Keep your line items vague and professional: always say “artwork commission” or “3x sketches.”
- Avoid easy-to-spot trigger keywords (“NSFW”, “hentai”, “lewd”) in your business name and description.
- If you’re concerned about privacy, Stripe allows you to hide your name and address when generating/sending invoices.
Ko-Fi: No Coffee for All Men
A familiar and long-standing donation site for artists and content creators, Ko-Fi is unfortunately allergic to NSFW creators. Although you are free to create an account with Ko-Fi and link it to your PayPal or Stripe, the faintest whiff of NSFW language will see your account shuttered.
Even having your Ko-Fi linked to a page that showcases NSFW content, such as your personal BlueSky or X account, is grounds for banning your account, making discoverability practically impossible.
VGen: The New Home for Digital Artists
So far, we’ve only discussed payment platforms that can replace the transactional part of PayPal.
Having a way for customers to purchase your artwork is one thing; bringing them to your doorstep is another. It’s already hard enough being an NSFW content creator when social media platforms deprioritize or ban adult content.
Enter VGen: a new, human-focused, community-driven art platform that welcomes adult content and explicitly bans AI-produced artwork. From streamer overlays to hentai commissions, VGen is replacing AI-infested sites like Fiverr and DeviantArt, and connecting customers with artists.
VGen emphasizes verification and user reviews, allowing you to work entirely on their platform from beginning to end. With work queues and waitlists, you can provide transparency to your active and future customers, and with their portfolio features, you can showcase all of your artwork — including verified commission work — for customers to browse. Your VGen commissions are flexibly built with optional add-ons and guaranteed payment for artists via an escrow system.
VGen supports payouts from either PayPal or Stripe via something called “VGen Payments.” If you’re using PayPal, beware that, as usual, your private information will be visible to customers.
If you choose “VGen Payments,” however, you’ll connect via Stripe (a separate concept from Stripe Business). Your personal information is hidden, and VGen will act as a “buffer” between you and Stripe. This is, to the best of our knowledge, one of the best and safest ways to get paid for NSFW art in 2025.
If you’re considering joining VGen, here’s what you need to know:
- VGen currently requires an invite code from a verified user, which can be obtained through raffles and giveaways from the VGen social media team.
- You can also post to social media with the hashtag “#VGenCode” and a verified artist will help you get a code.
- You will become verified and open to the marketplace after completing a series of goals; prior to that, you’ll need customers to visit your profile directly.
Pixiv: Requests, FANBOX, and Booth
Many anime and hentai artists love using Pixiv, a platform dedicated to Japanese-style artwork and doujin (self-published manga). Foreign users can still use the platform and its three marketplaces: Pixiv Requests, FANBOX, and Booth.
Your payment options for Pixiv are currently limited to PayPal, direct bank transfer (via a Japanese bank account only), or Wise. Thankfully, it’s rare for your PayPal or Wise account to be banned simply for connecting to Pixiv. As with VGen, payment platforms are unaware of what your payment is for or how you earned it (they only see the lump-sum payment, not how it was accrued).
Pixiv Requests is Pixiv’s commission service, allowing users to choose one of your available options and request the artwork they want. The system isn’t as polished or flexible as something like VGen, but if your artwork is popular on Pixiv, the discoverability is worth its weight in gold.
Pixiv FANBOX is essentially Pixiv’s version of Patreon. You can provide free content and multiple tiers of monthly paid content. Your FANBOX will be linked back to your main Pixiv account for easy discoverability, and you’ll get your own branding and URL.
Booth is a digital and physical marketplace where you can sell individual copies of your artwork, including non-watermarked variants and bonus content. Booth creators sell everything from VRoid models to digital artwork, plushies, novels, and even cosplay gear! When you post artwork to Pixiv, you can also link your matching Booth product for easy access.
Summary
PayPal might be one of the most common payment platforms online, but it’s far from the only option available. Unfortunately, creating NSFW content means walking a tightrope online no matter what; whether that’s posting on social media or making an income.
Part of becoming an NSFW artist is understanding the prejudice against adult content and finding ways to work around these barriers. Be careful how you label your transactions, and have a backup plan if you rely on your artwork as part of your living.
In short, if you’ve lost your PayPal account, want to preemptively protect your PayPal, or want to earn money from NSFW content in other ways, VGen and Pixiv are promising options.
Thanks so much for reading this guest article by Miyu (HitsujiMusume). You can follow them on BlueSky, and check out their work on VGen and Pixiv!