Letter to the Editor / Toronto Star / Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
By Valerie Scott & Amy Lebovitch, from SPOC.
re: Sex & Charity article found in the Toronto Star, April 25th 2009. Click HERE for original article.
Your article exposes as news the way escort services have had to process our clients’ credit card payments since the 1970s.
Despite the fact that prostitution is not illegal in Canada, credit card companies like Mastercard, Visa and American Express won’t provide escort services or individual escorts with merchant numbers, which would enable us to process fee payments ourselves. This is because the card companies fear negative publicity from those who can only see sex workers as either villains or victims.
The solution is simple: card companies must recognize prostitution as a straight-forward business transaction. It’s time for all Canadians to adopt a sensible approach to this occupation. Then we wouldn’t be put in the position of having to do business with racist scam artists.