Mastercard Inc. said it was investigating accusations against Pornhub.com that it features videos of child sexual abuse and other lewd materials on its adult online porn site, CNN reported Monday.
The move comes after a column in The New York Times accused the pornography site of allowing videos that depict child abuse and coercive sexual conduct.
Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof described the videos as recordings of sexual assaults on dazed women and girls. According to Kristof, the issue "is not pornography but rape," Reuters quoted him as saying.
The column includes testimonies from people whose lives were destroyed as minors after photographs of them naked were uploaded without their consent.
In a statement from MasterCard, which currently allows payments to Pornhub, it said it was working with the company's Montreal-based unit Mindgeek to get a clear picture.
"If the claims are validated, we'll take immediate action...when we identify illegal activity, our policy is to ask the acquirer to terminate the relationship," unless an effective compliance plan is put in place," Mastercard said in a statement to CNN Business.
Pornhub, which claims billions of monthly visits, replied to the accusations calling them "irresponsible and flagrantly untrue," adding the company didn't tolerate child sexual abuse on its website.
Pornhub said it employed measures to protect the site - including "an extensive team" of human moderators to manually evaluate each video and filter out illegal material and automated detection software.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman called on Mastercard and Visa Inc. to temporarily suspend payments to the site.
PayPal canceled payments to Pornhub in 2019 while American Express said it had a long-established rule that blocks the acceptance of credit cards as subscription payment on porn sites.
