I investigated this a few years ago in Australia. Sex work is legal in Australia, kinda. It is legal to exchange sexual services for money, but supporting and assisting such a transaction is illegal. So a landlord who rents a property to a sex worker is breaking the law. A payment processor who processes the card transaction is breaking the law, and so on. There are some clauses around managing establishments that basically make brothels just, barely, within the law.
It's a ridiculous position in that it almost forces sex workers onto the street or into brothels (which often take a huge chunk of each transaction). There was no way of getting my client (I was freelancing for a sex worker to try and solve some of their tech issues) any reasonable ability to process credit cards. Or do a wide range of things that we'd consider normal for a small business (like set up a Stripe account, or even a business bank account, or rent an office).
It's a ridiculous position in that it almost forces sex workers onto the street or into brothels (which often take a huge chunk of each transaction). There was no way of getting my client (I was freelancing for a sex worker to try and solve some of their tech issues) any reasonable ability to process credit cards. Or do a wide range of things that we'd consider normal for a small business (like set up a Stripe account, or even a business bank account, or rent an office).
This needs to change.