Vaultus launches financial account for adult industry in UK and EU
Business Economic Syndicated News 
Vaultus, a financial account built for businesses in the adult industry, launched yesterday across the UK and EU with five account tiers starting at £5 a month, offering multicurrency accounts, foreign exchange and forward contracts, card programmes, international payment rails and accounting integration to OnlyFans creators, agencies, adult retailers and sex tech businesses.
The five tiers, which the company says are powered by Equals, run from a Personal account for solo creators at £5 a month to a bespoke Platinum tier for enterprise-scale studios and agencies.
Every tier includes multicurrency accounts holding more than 35 currencies, physical, virtual and tokenised card issuance, and payments over the Faster Payments, SEPA and SWIFT rails used across UK and EU business finance. Business tiers add forward contracts and bulk payments for paying a roster of creators in a single batch, and the Gold and Platinum tiers include accounting integration with Xero and SAP.
Vaultus says the launch responds to what it calls a well-documented and ongoing problem. The Financial Conduct Authority’s September 2024 update on UK payment account access and closures found that firms’ financial crime risk tolerances often appeared to lead to certain business sectors, including pawnbrokers, defence companies and adult entertainment companies, being treated as higher risk or designated ineligible for a payment account.
The regulator’s report said adult entertainment industry representatives had explained that account denials or terminations could cause significant harm to the individuals running those businesses, particularly where they then had to rely on cash or personal bank accounts, with the latter revealing their name to clients and “therefore exposing them to blackmail”. The FCA added that some firms had acknowledged a need to recalibrate their controls to reduce the inadvertent exclusion of compliant adult entertainment workers.
Vaultus also cites a 2023 survey of more than 600 adult industry members by the Free Speech Coalition and SexWorkCEO, which it says found that 63 per cent of respondents had lost a bank account or a financial tool such as PayPal, Venmo or Cash App because of their work, with 36 per cent losing an account in the 12 months before the survey. Half of respondents named financial discrimination as the single biggest issue they face, and 64 per cent said they had no other significant source of income, according to the figures cited by Vaultus.
The two organisations published an interim report on the survey in March 2023, when it had more than 400 responses, which said 78 per cent of respondents were based in the United States.
Vaultus was founded in 2024 by four friends who, the company says, had their own experiences of debanking and financial exclusion. Cameron, who runs an agency that the company says moves substantial and entirely legitimate sums on behalf of the creators he manages, had already been debanked once, and Ava, a working creator, had been debanked multiple times, according to Vaultus. They were supported by Kieran, a solicitor, and Becky, an accountant, who is the company’s chief executive. Vaultus identified its founders by first name only.
“No cover story required is the whole idea,” said Becky, chief executive of Vaultus. “We got tired of rewording invoices and scrambling to move money before an account closed on us. This is a legal industry paying corporation tax like any other. It deserves financial infrastructure that treats it like any other, too.”
Vaultus enters a creator economy that Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research estimates grew from around 50 million people worldwide in 2022 to approximately 67 million in 2025, according to figures cited by the company, with US influencer marketing spend alone reaching around $26bn in 2023. Goldman Sachs forecasts growth at close to a 10 per cent compound annual rate to around 107 million creators by 2030, Vaultus said.
The company noted that none of that research is specific to adult content, but said subscription-led platforms, the model on which OnlyFans, Fansly and Fanvue operate, are named as the fastest-growing part of the picture it describes.
