{"id":39552,"date":"2024-11-08T18:32:58","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T09:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=39552"},"modified":"2024-11-08T18:33:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T09:33:00","slug":"japanese-manga-and-game-store-melonbooks-becomes-the-latest-japanese-platform-to-run-into-trouble-with-international-payment-processors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/nongaming-news\/japanese-manga-and-game-store-melonbooks-becomes-the-latest-japanese-platform-to-run-into-trouble-with-international-payment-processors\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese manga and game store Melonbooks becomes the latest Japanese platform to run into trouble with international payment processors\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Melonbooks, a Japanese platform that sells independently published manga (doujinshi), video games and anime Blu-rays, suddenly announced on November 18 that it will be suspending Mastercard and Visa payments. They are the latest in a series of Japanese content platforms to be impacted by the tightening regulations of international payment processing companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although Melonbooks\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.melonbooks.co.jp\/news\/index.php?news_id=914\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">official announcement<\/a> does not give a reason for this decision, it is likely that they received a request to remove adult content. International payment processors have been tightening their regulations lately, to avoid situations in which their money transfer networks are used in the monetization of illegally produced sexual content and\/or content depicted sexual acts involving minors.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This has had a big impact on Japanese sites offering legal fanart and doujinshi manga. So far this year, Skeb, Niconico, DMM, <a href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/dlsite-disables-visa-mastercard-payment-after-attempt-to-outsmart-credit-card-companies\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">DLSite<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/another-japanese-content-creators-platform-loses-visa-mastercard-support\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Fantia<\/a> have been among the sites that have had to disable Visa and Mastercard payments. Earlier this week, Manga Library Z, an online archive of out-of-print manga, announced that it was shutting down after 14 years because it had lost its primary forms of payment and could not sustain itself (<a href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/nongaming-news\/japan-is-losing-an-archive-of-out-of-print-manga-because-of-international-credit-card-companies\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">related article<\/a>).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This latest announcement about Melonbooks has <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/tatsunoritoku\/status\/1854788916840436018\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">prompted concerns<\/a> on Japanese social media that the regulations enforced by payment processors are unfairly impacting self-published manga artists and fanart creators.\u00a0Melonbooks <a href=\"https:\/\/www.melonbooks.co.jp\/special\/b\/0\/service\/overseas_en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">describes itself<\/a> as &#8220;the one-stop shop for all doujinshi products, including manga, novels, music, video games and more.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From December 19, Melonbooks\u2019 customers will no longer be able to pay with Mastercard or Visa when ordering from the online site. However, they will still be able to use JCB and American Express for now. Melonbooks hopes to get Visa and Mastercard payments re-enabled at its brick-and-mortar stores but it has no plans to try to reinstate them on its online shop. To counter this, Melonbooks will be offering a workaround whereby online shoppers can pay in-store.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melonbooks is suspending Mastercard and Visa payments, likely due to demands from international payment processors related to adult content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":39557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-39552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nongaming-news","tag-japan-related-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Japanese manga and game store Melonbooks becomes the latest Japanese platform to run into trouble with international payment processors\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Melonbooks is suspending Mastercard and Visa payments, likely due to demands from international payment processors related to adult content.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/nongaming-news\/japanese-manga-and-game-store-melonbooks-becomes-the-latest-japanese-platform-to-run-into-trouble-with-international-payment-processors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Japanese manga and game store Melonbooks becomes the latest Japanese platform to run into trouble with international payment processors\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Melonbooks is suspending Mastercard and Visa payments, likely due to demands from international payment processors related to adult content.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/nongaming-news\/japanese-manga-and-game-store-melonbooks-becomes-the-latest-japanese-platform-to-run-into-trouble-with-international-payment-processors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"AUTOMATON WEST\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-11-08T09:32:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-11-08T09:33:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/20241108-39552-header.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"552\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Verity Townsend\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@AUTOMATON_ENG\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@AUTOMATON_ENG\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Verity Townsend\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Japanese manga and game store Melonbooks becomes the latest Japanese platform to run into trouble with international payment processors\u00a0 - 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She has a soft spot for old-school Sierra adventure games and Final Fantasy VIII (yes, 8!). Can often be found hunting down weird forgotten games and finding out everything about them. Frequently muses about characters and lines from Metal Gear Solid and Disco Elysium. 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