But since there are only a handful of payment processors, what if they all collude and do this?

This is possible, but I kind of doubt that say, MasterCard and Visa are going to blanket ban all kinds of ‘adult’ charges… at least right now.

Like uh, ever been to a strip club?

Its not like Visa and MC don’t know that the ATMs there are infact at strip clubs, and even those ATMs are still ultimately using Visa or MC as a payment processor.

I imagine that if they weren’t already, this event has likely spawned a payment processor independence project internally.

I’d say probably not full fledged, ‘we are actively developing this’ project, but it may have at least spawned some discussion along the lines I above described.

The way large tech corps tend to work is that a whole bunch of at least high level, general concept plans are drawn up, considered in meetings, sorta like cards pulled out of a deck, into your hand… and then there is deliberation as to whether or not to actually ‘play’ said card.

The way I know that above paragraph is that uh, hah, like GabeN, I used to work for MSFT, and a few other companies/nonprofits with a significant tech aspect.