The federal government recently issued a 47-page report on banks cutting off customers for reasons nobody will explain. The adult industry, which has been living that experience for years, doesn’t appear in it once.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released the report, titled “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” on October 14. It covers nine of the country’s largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank, and BMO Bank. Yet it fails to mention any of the adult creators impacted by massive debanking.
After President Trump’s August 2025 executive order prohibited financial providers from restricting access to accounts, loans, or services because of lawful business activities they disfavor for political reasons, the OCC issued a preliminary report that named adult entertainment among the industries facing discrimination: “Lines of business within some banks either strictly restricted access to, or required escalated review for, certain financial products or services in connection with customers engaged in the sale or distribution of adult media.”
But that industry is not mentioned in the latest report. Industries like oil and gas, coal, firearms, private prisons, tobacco, and cryptocurrency were mentioned alongside the adult industry before, but not anymore. The new report focuses mostly on conservative and right-wing companies and on industries seen as disfavored by the political left. Its first example is a merchant selling MAGA-themed merchandise. Others involve account closures tied to a bank’s responsible-firearms standards and to an organization’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
The odd part is how closely the findings describe adult creators’ complaints without explicitly naming them. The report says banks largely lacked clear, measurable standards and objective, risk-based criteria for judging reputation risk. It says poor communication left customers unable to understand why a bank was asking questions or making decisions, and that banks often offered no meaningful explanation. Any creator who’s had an account frozen or closed without a straight answer knows exactly how that feels.
Isla Moon, for one, lived it this year. She employs more than 60 people and had to cash out her millions in investments to keep her television series going when her bank refused to let her borrow against her investments. It’s something that other investors are typically allowed to do, but once the bank learned how she makes her money, they refused. She liquidated everything, including her retirement savings, to make payroll. And she’s not the only creator who has ficed this problem. The financial squeeze on the industry has been going on for years.
So far, federal efforts have changed little for creators and companies in the industry. The Federal Trade Commission has warned credit card and payment companies not to deny service based on lawful business activities perceived as high-risk. The OCC and FDIC have dropped “reputation risk” as a supervision factor. Yet in April, the IRS introduced new deductions for tipped workers and excluded money earned from “pornographic activity.”
The OCC says it will keep evaluating account termination practices and may issue additional guidance or regulations. In the meantime, adult industry workers who’ve been debanked can file a complaint through HelpWithMyBank.gov, and the Free Speech Coalition is asking people to share their banking-discrimination stories, which it will pass along anonymously to help policymakers understand the problem.
This report just proved federal regulators can identify debanking when they want to, and it documents the same vague, unexplained account closures adult creators have described for years. If those standards apply to a merchant selling campaign merchandise, they should apply to a creator who’s paying taxes, running payroll, and complying with the law.