It seems that UK banks and credit card companies will be asked to hold back cash from customers of sites hosting explicit content if they fail to implement restrictions to stop children from accessing it.

Financial entities and the video services regulator are going to meet in October to finalize the deal. Media reports also reveal that a voluntary deal might be agreed with credit card firms. It seems that government would be prepared to consider legislation, if necessary.

While some online services require users to verify their age, most of them offer free and unrestricted access to any visitors. This is why the authority regulating British websites hosting videos decided to act against services operating in this way. In the beginning of 2013, regulator Ofcom fined Playboy £100,000 for failing to protect kids from porn content. A couple of websites owned by Playboy allowed everyone to access explicit content without having acceptable controls in place to check that users are adults. Ofcom claimed that Playboy’s failure to protect kids from potentially accessing adult content was serious, repeated and reckless.

The UK government supports the work that the watchdog has undertaken, and it will explore with local financial organizations and credit card companies the possibility to decline processing payments to websites operating outside the EU that allow British kids to view porn content.

The authorities also support efforts to encourage the Internet industry to design new effective ways of verifying the age of visitors. In the meanwhile, it wouldn’t be appropriate to block outright all online services providing free hardcore porn because they host legitimate content for adults to view.

So, the meeting is scheduled to October with the UK Cards Association, the British Bankers Association, the Payments Council and the leading credit card companies. It is already known that the financial services companies had provided a “very positive response” to the proposal.

As you remember, the UK Prime Minister has suggested a new initiative earlier in 2013 aimed at getting ISPs to put filters in place. Online giants including Google and Yahoo are set to be called back to Downing Street in October to update the Prime Minister on the progress on such measures.