GETTING PAID SHOULDN’T BE THE HARD PART
‘Safety Training With The Cupcake Girls’ puts the focus on content creator safety- and the financial risks that can threaten an independent career
Scroll long enough and it’s easy to forget that your feed is also somebody’s workplace. Behind the GRWMs, beauty tutorials, restaurant reviews and hyper-specific niche obsessions are creators shooting, editing, pitching, invoicing and paying taxes.
And there are a lot of them. According to a 2025 study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, digital creators and social media influencers account for more than one in 10 full-time internet-dependent jobs in the United States- the equivalent of more than 1.5 million full-time jobs.
The financial headaches attached to creator life are familiar: unpredictable income, delayed brand payments, shifting algorithms and production costs that don’t care whether a video performed. But there is another risk that receives less attention, perhaps because some of the people experiencing it most visibly are adult creators.
The creator economy promises independence, but that independence has limits. You may not need a boss’s approval to do the work, but you still need a bank or payment company’s cooperation to get paid.
Adult creators know what happens when that cooperation disappears. In a 2023 survey of more than 600 adult-industry members, the Free Speech Coalition found that 63% of respondents earning money in the industry reported having lost access to a bank account or financial tool because of their work.
The practice is called debanking. It’s what happens when a bank decides a customer-or their line of work-is too risky, then restricts payments, freezes funds or closes the account altogether, even when the work itself is legal.
The issue extends beyond isolated complaints. In December 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a federal regulator that supervises national banks, found restrictive banking policies at every one of the nine largest national banks it reviewed. Adult entertainment was one of the lawful industries caught up in them.
Veteran adult performer and creator Cherie DeVille recently brought renewed attention to debanking when she shared on Instagram that Bank of America had closed her personal and business accounts after years as a customer.
“Not because I committed fraud or did something illegal, not because I owe them money, but because I’m an adult content creator,” she told her followers.
“Whether you personally approve of my job or not is kind of beside the point,” she continued. “I work in a completely legal business. I pay my taxes, I have employees, I run a company. Like all legal businesses, I deserve access to banking just like any other law-abiding American.”
Bank of America has disputed DeVille’s characterization, saying the closures were unrelated to her profession. DeVille has continued to challenge the bank’s explanation publicly.
Even as the reason for DeVille’s closures remains contested, the stakes of losing access are clear: creators can be left unable to receive income, pay employees, or cover basic living expenses.
So what can creators do if it happens to them? The new season of Safety Training With The Cupcake Girls offers some answers. A partnership between Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, and The Cupcake Girls, an anti-trafficking nonprofit that supports sex workers, the video series provides practical guidance on financial planning, consent, exploitation and professional stigma for creators and performers in the adult space.
Adult performer Sarah Arabic, who previously worked as a financial analyst, presents the series’ financial-literacy episode. She explains that the risk of debanking extends beyond traditional banks: payment apps such as PayPal and Venmo can also restrict accounts.
Codi Vore, an adult star who also appears in Safety Training With The Cupcake Girls, knows that firsthand. She says Venmo deleted her account “without warning or explanation.”
“I had recently been paid for a shoot through Venmo, and I have to assume that’s what made them remove me from the platform,” Vore says. “The laws in place put too much responsibility on payment processors to prevent illegal activity, so in order to avoid that liability, they ban anyone that they think could be a risk.”
Knowing what to do next is not always straightforward. Mia Lee sees that problem from both sides of the desk. A CPA and investment adviser who is also a content creator and professional escort, Lee co-founded Floorplay Financial to provide specialized financial services to people in the adult industry.
Lee says identifying what prompted a restriction- discrimination, an internal bank policy or a legal requirement-can demand technical knowledge most customers don’t have. She recommends consulting an expert before opening an account elsewhere.
“Often, individuals divulge unnecessary information and may even trigger more financial trauma when attempting to navigate debanking alone,” Lee says.
Arabic also shares the approach she uses in her own business. She works closely with an accountant, banks with a small local institution, maintains an LLC with its own account and pays herself through a separate personal account.
“Financial literacy is empowerment…especially for independent contractors,” she says.
Being your own boss means betting on yourself. It should not mean wondering whether the financial tools your livelihood depends on will still be there tomorrow.
Photo by Alexander Grey / Unsplashed
