What Happened to WishTender and why did it close in 2024?
In a surprising and heartfelt announcement, WishTender, a service popular among the adult creator community, has revealed its decision to shut down operations. The closure comes after several challenging months of trying to overcome a series of setbacks, including severe financial and technical issues.
WishTender’s troubles began when it was abruptly removed from Stripe, a major payment processing service. This removal triggered a cascade of problems, as few alternatives could match Stripe’s capabilities. The company stayed in beta mode to address numerous issues, such as finding reliable backup processors, resolving functional payment problems, ensuring compliance, and preventing misuse of the platform by bad actors.
In the last few days, WishTender faced an unprecedented and malicious attack known as “card testing.” Unlike typical card testers who seek to profit, these attackers aimed solely to inflict harm on WishTender. The timing was particularly unfortunate, as WishTender was already vulnerable, and despite their best efforts, the company’s resources were insufficient to fend off the attacks.
New fraud detection tools were deployed, but the attackers continually found ways to circumvent them. Although WishTender believed they had eventually found a solution, it was too late. The attacks had already caused significant issues with Visa, leading to an existential threat to all of their payment processing capabilities. Ultimately, the combination of these challenges proved insurmountable with the resources at hand.
