Cardflo review: a UK broker for adult merchant accounts

Cardflo is a broker sitting on top of partner acquirers

Cardflo is not an acquirer and does not underwrite merchants: its licensed partner acquirers assess and board every account, and Cardflo stays as your single point of contact. You end up with your own MID with a partner bank, which puts your own descriptor on your customers’ statements.

On top of that sits an orchestration layer. Each transaction goes to the cheapest route likely to approve it, soft declines retry on another acquirer, and volume can be spread across MIDs to stay under one bank’s volume or chargeback caps. You connect through one API, a plugin or a hosted checkout, and Cardflo can also sit on top of your existing acquirer and add a backup.

When an acquirer puts your account under review, Cardflo offers a rescue service: decline analysis, negotiating a rolling reserve to avoid a full freeze, chargeback alerts, descriptor and MCC review, help with MATCH list remediation and moving volume to a specialist acquirer.

How much does Cardflo cost?

Cardflo publishes three bands: from 0.2% over interchange for low risk, 0.6% for medium risk and 1% for high risk, which is where adult sits. That margin covers the acquirer, the Cardflo platform and routing. Interchange and scheme fees are passed through at cost and itemized on each statement.

There is no setup fee for standard onboarding, no monthly platform minimum, no minimum processing volume and no multi-year contract. Add-ons such as network tokenization or 3DS optimization show as separate quote lines. Mastercard high-risk registration goes through the partner acquirer, and Cardflo helps prepare and renew it, but quotes no amount.

What Cardflo’s acquirers ask of cam and video sites

A porn website application needs the age verification provider agreement and test evidence, producer and performer releases, a content moderation policy and six months of statements, or a business plan with forecasts for a new site. Subscription terms, checkout captures, the billing descriptor and a self-service cancellation flow are reviewed too. Paysites and tubes are typically boarded with a 5% to 10% rolling reserve held for about six months.

A cam platform adds performer ID and age records with ongoing re-verification, model agreements, token pricing and tipping rules, and statements that split tokens, subscriptions and tips. Typical MCCs are 5967 for cam token purchases and 5968 for recurring paywalls. Declines usually come from incomplete consent records or renewals that aren’t disclosed clearly.

Cardflo onboarding time and settlement

High-risk quotes come back in 24 to 48 hours, and adult, gaming, crypto and nutra accounts typically go live in 2 to 4 weeks. Cardflo quotes under 14 days for standard applications and two to six weeks to migrate volume from an existing provider.

Card settlement is typically T+2, local rails next day. Cardflo advertises 400+ payment methods including open banking, more than 135 transaction currencies and settlement in more than 30, including GBP, EUR, USD, CAD and AUD.

Who is behind Cardflo?

Cardflo Limited was incorporated in England and Wales in January 2021 and is registered in Wilmslow, near Manchester. Its Spanish entity, Cardflo Payments SL, opened in Málaga in 2023. The first live MID came in 2022 through a partner acquirer. The UK company is filed under business support services and holds no payment license.

The founders say they ran high-risk merchant businesses for about a decade, and the head of risk previously worked at SafeCharge, now Nuvei. The site runs in fourteen languages. Cardflo scores 4.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 7 reviews.

Strengths and limitations of Cardflo