NicoNico, Japan’s long-standing video-sharing platform, has formally announced that they’ve re-enabled Visa payments nearly a year after severing ties with the payment processor due to a dispute over content control.
While this might appear as a win for convenience, the reinstatement is not without its caveats, and its timing raises significant questions about the sacrifices NicoNico made to get Visa back on board.
Back in May 2024, Visa withdrew from NicoNico, allegedly over concerns related to problematic content hosted on the site. One notable instance cited was a viral video of a kitten being bathed in a sink, titled in a way that falsely depicted abuse, which Visa demanded to be removed. This led to broader scrutiny over NicoNico’s content policies, with Visa exerting pressure to clean house before reconsidering its relationship with the platform.
Now, just as Visa payments make their return, NicoNico conspicuously shut down its external illustration service, NicoNico Shunga, a platform known for hosting mature and illicit artwork.
Officially, NicoNico cites “social environment” concerns as the reason for this purge, but the coincidence is difficult to ignore. It’s clear that conforming to Visa’s demands was a prerequisite for restoring payment processing capabilities.
Visa, along with Mastercard, has been aggressively policing Japanese creative freedom under the guise of “brand protection.” Their actions have disproportionately targeted content deemed controversial, particularly legal erotica, including lolicon material that features youthful, stylized “moe” characters.
While such content remains legal in Japan and countries such as America, these financial giants have unilaterally imposed their own moral framework, cutting off payment access for digital and physical storefronts that host or distribute these works. This heavy-handed approach has drawn criticism, especially considering Visa’s own reported complicity in facilitating actual child exploitation on platforms like OnlyFans, as exposed by whistleblowers.
NicoNico, a subsidiary of Dwango which is fully owned by Kadokawa, the media juggernaut that monopolizes Japan’s literary industry has once again demonstrated its willingness to comply to financial overlords and their global standards.
Kadokawa, which recently partnered with Sony to push for a more “globalized” anime market, is already under scrutiny for its role in diluting the distinctiveness of Japanese animation in favor of sanitized, corporate-friendly productions that prioritize mass appeal, diversity quotas, and international distribution.
In this context, NicoNico’s decision to bow down to Visa’s demands is another troubling sign of how cultural shifts are happening under the guise of global conformity and profit. The platform has distanced itself from its once-vibrant erotic content community, not because of any moral responsibility, but to secure its financial future under the scrutiny of oppressive payment processors.
In October 2024, NicoNico updated its Terms of Use to enforce stricter content rules that align with international standards for “problematic” material, which was soon followed by the removal of 50,000 videos in January 2025.
Rebranding its adult content category to the vague “rei no sore” (which translates to “you know what”) is just another sign of its ongoing shift into a platform more focused on censorship and compliance rather than fostering creative freedom for its native Japanese audience.
For long-standing users, this development presents a troubling precedent. The increasing influence of financial corporations in shaping content policies, particularly in a country with a distinct legal framework and cultural norms raises significant concerns regarding the future of artistic expression.
Japan, in particular, appears to be disproportionately targeted. Instances such as Japanese banks withholding payments to Japanese eroge developers regarding profits they’ve made from Steam sales, alongside the likes of Nintendo‘s foreign branches sporadically targeting and blocking Japanese games from releasing abroad due to containing heteronormative content and fanservice alongside the actions of VISA and Mastercard disrupting commercial storefronts, highlight the growing dominance of financial entities in regulating content.
Businesses are left with the option to comply in order to retain services or face the possibility of losing access entirely. Given that VISA, MasterCard, and Japan’s domestic JCB collectively control a substantial portion of the market, the inability to process approximately 66% of payments could prove fatal for many businesses.
Although NicoNico may have regained VISA’s partnership, it has done so at the expense of its autonomy, demonstrating that economic coercion, rather than local legal frameworks, has become the true gatekeeper of online content. With VISA and Mastercard likely to impose increasingly stringent demands, this cycle of censorship is poised to repeat itself.
Such developments represent a slippery slope for freedom of expression.
