Tower Payments

A broker for adult stores that card processors turn away

Tower Payments is a high-risk credit card processing company that finds merchant accounts and payment gateways for websites most mainstream processors will not take. Its contact page describes it as a division of Transaction Resources, Inc., based in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and its about page says the company has served businesses in specialized industries across the USA and Canada since 2015. The about page credits its founding to Nyah Penney, who set the company up after seeing lawful e-commerce merchants struggle with payment processing because their industries sat outside traditional processors' comfort zones.

For a site operator the useful framing is that Tower works as an intermediary rather than a bank or a single processor. The about page makes independence its selling point: the company says it is not locked into any single processing solution, which it argues lets it advocate for the merchant, negotiate rates on the merchant's behalf and keep accounts in good standing. The adult pages are written for online stores selling adult toys, dolls and AI intimate companions, and for adult cam membership sites. A tube, a paysite network or a large video operation is not the audience the pages address.

What it sells an operator

Tower's product is the pairing of a high-risk merchant account with a payment gateway that works on the merchant's existing shopping cart. The adult toy page explains the logic: an operator needs both a gateway and a merchant account, and the page says finding sex-toy-friendly processing with fair terms is hard even for people who know the territory. The company's answer is to do the matching. The homepage says it reviews the site, learns the business, and looks for a processing solution that approves the account and works with the site.

The gateways named across the pages are Authorize.Net, ePN and NMI. The Shopify page spells out why this matters. To sell most high-risk items on Shopify, the page says, a payment provider has to connect processing through the Authorize.Net gateway, and Authorize.Net is software, not processing, which normally connects to one of its low-risk merchant account partners unless the site owner chooses a different account. Tower's stated approach is that the owner should get the gateway directly from the high-risk processor, which the page says makes the process smoother with fewer surprises.

Integration is part of the service. The pages name Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce with WordPress, Wix, Webflow, ClickFunnels, GoDaddy, Squarespace and Magento, and the navigation also lists Checkout Champ. The homepage says the team will help connect a new gateway and merchant account to nearly any major shopping cart or site builder at no additional cost. It also says it supports both in-house fulfillment and dropshippers. A dedicated Magento article is aimed at adult cam membership sites, describing the open-source platform as a fit for sites that need specialized payment handling and saying Tower specializes in processing for adult cam sites and other high-risk businesses.

The terms that decide the choice

The durable facts are about process rather than numbers. Tower publishes no rate card. The adult toy page promises "pricing in writing", and the Shopify page says all fees are disclosed in one clear proposal; the homepage says rates and terms are provided upfront and that a real person supports the merchant for the life of the account. The pages do not print a processing percentage, a monthly fee, a setup fee, a reserve, a chargeback fee, a payout schedule or a contract term, so an operator learns those only after contact. The pages also do not name the acquiring bank or the processing partners behind the accounts.

On adult content, the pages show who Tower writes for and stop there. Adult toys, dolls and AI companion products, and adult cam membership sites, are all addressed directly. There is no acceptable-use policy listing what content a merchant account allows, no statement about video, streaming or downloadable content beyond a passing mention of adult entertainment in the WooCommerce article, and no approval criteria. The toys page makes one claim an operator should read carefully: it says a sex toy business does not need to register formally as an adult business with Visa and MasterCard, unlike a true adult website, while warning that local and state laws still apply. Tower's footer and the toys page both say the company is not an attorney and gives no legal advice, and that merchants should seek qualified counsel.

Chargebacks are treated as a standard risk of the category. The pages attribute them to embarrassment and caution at the point of purchase and to buyers denying a purchase they made. The toys page lists general merchant practices of clear and accurate product descriptions, good customer service, a clear refund policy and fraud detection, and says Tower offers fraud detection and chargeback management tools; it does not describe what those tools are or what a chargeback fee or ratio limit looks like. The doll page adds that an age verification feature on the site and an adult signature requirement on delivery are sensible precautions. Nothing is said about DMCA handling, record-keeping or payout timing.

Getting started and support

The route in is a conversation. The pages invite a contact form submission or a phone call, and the toys page promises to answer questions, provide pricing in writing and help with cart integration one on one. The pages describe a start button at the bottom of the product pages as the way to begin an application. The homepage says Tower looks at the site and the business before it proposes a solution, and that before submitting any application on the merchant's behalf it pre-screens the business with its high-risk processing partners and presents all the fees ahead of time, going over the positives and negatives of each choice. For a store that already has high-risk processing, the shopping carts page offers free "rate reviews" of the existing account.

On support, the homepage promises a real human assigned for the life of the account and says new clients are often surprised by the responsiveness. The doll page repeats a promise of one-on-one support for as long as the merchant is a customer. No support hours, ticket system or service levels are published. Platform-specific help is the other channel: the site carries articles for Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Wix merchants, and recent posts cover doll and AI companion sites on Shopify.

Company and track record

Beyond the 2015 founding date and the Massachusetts address, the pages give a few claims. The toys page cites more than 20 years of industry experience behind Tower Payments and says the company has helped thousands of high-risk businesses get processing running; the about page says thousands of websites. These are the vendor's own statements, with no client names, certifications or industry memberships published. The company also serves supplement, CBD, cannabis seed, head shop, nicotine pouch, tobacco and dating merchants, so adult is one of several regulated categories on its client list.

Who it suits

As a merchant account broker, Tower matches an adult store or cam membership site with a merchant account and gateway and then connects it to a cart. On the processing side, it is the intermediary for operators on Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix or Magento who have been turned away by Stripe, PayPal or Shopify Payments, which the pages name as restricting adult merchants. It fits an adult toy shop, a doll or AI companion store, or a small cam membership site that wants a human to handle the matching.

The caveat is transparency before contact. Rates, reserves and the underlying processor are not public, and the pages do not describe recurring billing for content memberships, tube traffic or high-volume paysite needs. The strength is the plain, retailer-focused service: cart integrations at no extra charge, fees in one written proposal, and a named person behind the account.