Pirate Manga Site MangaDex Now Accepts Visa and Mastercard

MangaDex added more fuel to the fire. After announcing it would ban manga featuring minors in ecchi situations and amid rumors that it might try to become a new Crunchyroll (despite denying it), fans discovered yet another change!

Near the footer on the left sidebar, you can see their mascot and social media links, along with the copyright and terms of service. And now there’s something new! They’ve added the logos of the censorship companies Visa, Mastercard, and American Express!

If you visit the site now, you’ll notice the logos of these companies are indeed there. I got curious to see if it had always been like that and whether people were overreacting, so I checked the Wayback Machine—here’s how it looked in 2024:

Yes, back in 2024 there were no Visa or Mastercard logos. Additionally, there were icons for Discord and Reddit. Well, I don’t even need to say it—the community didn’t take it well that MangaDex added the logos of these companies to the site. But it says a lot about what’s currently happening with MangaDex.

It turns out this was actually an official announcement by MangaDex. They revealed that they now accept payments via Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, which is why the icons were added.

Apparently, they are also complying with the rules of these censorship companies in order to use their services, and this may be the reason behind the recent bans on manga featuring minors in ecchi situations.

“I noticed the Bakemonogatari manga disappeared from the site”
“The mark of the censorship beast”
“The enemies of otaku nowadays”
“Of course, it’s the big banks”
“No thanks, I wish them the worst”
“Paying for a pirate site, is anyone really that dumb?”
“There are better sites now”

What do you think about this move? Because they basically sold out just to be able to use Visa and Mastercard.