New Zealand State-Run Bank Backs Off From Ban On Brothel Business

LOS ANGELES—After an outcry from the country’s legalize sex workers, New Zealand’s state-run Kiwibank now says that it will lift its ban on providing financial services for brothel businesses, according to a report by the New Zealand news site Stuff.co.nz.  As New Zealand continues to reopen its economy, after a countrywide effort that reduced its coronavirus case count to zero, Kiwibank released a new policy statement on Tuesday outlining various types of enterprises that were banned from doing business with the bank, which is a subsidiary of New Zealand’s postal service. Under the policy, the bank said it will refuse business from casinos, predatory lenders, and businesses dealing in fossil fuels or military-grade weapons. But the country’s legal brothels, as well as strip clubs, were also excluded from holding Kiwibank accounts. Sex work has been decriminalized  in New Zealand since 2003. Operating brothels is also legal, though brothel owners with more than four sex workers at work in their establishments must hold a valid operator’s license. After negotiations Wednesday with the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, which had immediately objected to the Kiwibank policy, the ban announced that it would “continue to bank businesses in that (adult) sector who can demonstrate good practice.” Sex workers were not banned from doing business with the bank as individuals, but the NZPC objected that by shutting out brothels, the incomes of sex workers would suffer. The sex worker advocates say that the requirement that brothel owners “demonstrate good practice” still requires them to meet a higher standard of conduct than other, legal businesses. New Zealand sex workers told Stuff.co.nz that other banks have also refused to do business with them, and that obtaining a ban loan is “impossible” for sex workers in that country. But the situation in the United States is similar, even for legal, sexually oriented businesses. And lats year, PayPal announced that it would no longer process payments for adult industry performers.  Photo By Pear285 / Wikimedia Commons