Does the Online Safety Act apply if the company is registered outside the UK?
Yes. The Act applies to services with links to the UK - a significant number of UK users, or the UK as a target market - regardless of where the company is incorporated, and Ofcom has pursued non-UK operators. The realistic options are compliance or genuinely geo-blocking the UK. Geo-blocking has to be real enforcement at the edge, not a banner asking visitors to leave.
Is a credit-card check enough on its own?
Ofcom lists card checks among the methods capable of being highly effective, but what is assessed is your implementation: whether it actually confirms the holder is over 18 and resists obvious circumvention. Most operators pair a primary method with a fallback so users who fail one route convert through another instead of being lost at the door.
Can we advertise escort services on a UK site?
Sex work itself is not illegal in the UK, but brothel-keeping, controlling prostitution for gain and causing or inciting prostitution for gain are offences under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and advertising platforms have been prosecuted on that basis. We build independent-provider profile sites and content platforms; we do not build agency-model advertising for the UK market.
What does Ofcom actually look at?
How the age assurance works, what evidence you hold that it is effective, what records you keep, and whether a child can reach pornographic content by any obvious route. That last point catches people: previews, thumbnails, search-engine caches, RSS output and social embeds are where sites fail, not the paywall itself. We audit those surfaces as part of the build.