Key points
- This OFM glossary defines 43 terms in five families: platforms and products, roles and players, money and payments, law and tax, safety and image.
- A chatter answers fans in the creator's place to sell individual pieces of content (PPV); the split is how income is shared between creator and agency; the payout is the transfer from the platform to a bank account.
- Legal terms point to their source: promoting prostitution (18 U.S.C. § 2421A in the US, sections 52-53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in the UK), performer records (18 U.S.C. § 2257), worker classification (FLSA and the state ABC tests), age assurance (Online Safety Act 2023).
- Every term covered in depth elsewhere on the site links to the relevant article: this glossary is a way in, not a complete guide.
Texts and figures checked on June 9, 2026. Sources are listed at the end of the article.
The OFM industry speaks a language made of platform English, banking acronyms and code articles. An agency contract mentions the split, the payout and KYC in the same paragraph; a labour authority talks about worker classification; a letter from a bank cites anti-money-laundering rules. This OFM glossary brings together the 43 terms that come up most often, sorted into five families, each defined in two or three sentences. Where a term points to a legal text, the text is cited; where it is covered elsewhere on the site, the article is linked. If you are looking for the definition of OFM itself, it has its own article.
Platforms and products: what is sold, and where
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| OnlyFans | Subscription content platform operated by Fenix International Limited, a British company registered in London. It withholds 20% of every payment from a fan and pays the rest to the creator, in US dollars. How it works is set out in our OnlyFans guide. |
| MYM | A European platform of the same kind, operated by AIR MEDIAS. It passes on 75% of subscription prices and 80% of private media, shows and tips, after banking fees of 7% on the transaction. Where a platform is established changes VAT and reporting: see our platform comparison. |
| Fansly, Fanvue | The two main alternatives: Fansly is operated from the United States by Select Media LLC, Fanvue from the United Kingdom by Shift Holdings Ltd. Each has its own rules on commission, payment and verification. |
| Subscription (sub) | Paid monthly access to a creator's profile. The price is set by the creator within the platform's limits; this is the recurring income, the one that gives visibility over the following month. |
| PPV | Pay per view: content sold individually, most often inside a private conversation, on top of the subscription. It is the leading source of income for accounts run by an agency, because the sale depends on the quality of the exchange with the fan. |
| Tip | An amount paid freely by a fan, on a post, in a message or during a live. Legally this is not a gift: it is business income, taxable like the rest. |
| Mass message | Sending the same message, often with PPV content, to every subscriber or to a segment. A central sales tool for agencies, governed by each platform's content rules. |
| Live, private show | Live broadcast, open to subscribers or sold to a single fan. The private show is the product closest to the criminal line, and the reason the line holds is that prostitution offences target in-person services: courts on both sides of the Atlantic have declined to treat acts performed remotely in front of a camera as prostitution. |
| Free page | A profile with no paid subscription, used as a shop window and selling only through PPV. Many agencies run one alongside the paid account to convert social media traffic. |
Roles and players: who does what
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| OFM | OnlyFans Management: running, on a creator's behalf, everything that is not the content itself (marketing, conversations, administration), in exchange for a percentage of her income. Full definition. |
| OFM agency | A company that manages several creators with a team and is paid through a contractual commission, commonly between 20 and 50% of net income. Its model and costs are described in the OFM business model. |
| Manager | A person, often freelance, who handles one or two creators. Status matters: a manager with no company and no contract is exposed on tax, banking and criminal fronts exactly like an agency, without having the structure of one. |
| Chatter | Person who answers fans in the creator's place to sell PPV and build loyalty. Often freelance, often abroad, paid by the hour or as a percentage. This is the role that triggers the most reclassifications as employment when the agency imposes hours, scripts and penalties. |
| Creator | Account holder, owner of her image and, in principle, of her content. She alone remains responsible for what is published under her name, whatever an agency contract may say. |
| Fan, subscriber | The end customer. They pay the platform, not the creator: that is why VAT on sales is collected by the platform, and why the creator invoices a service to the platform. |
| CRM | Software that centralises conversations, sales and statistics across several accounts. Essential beyond two creators; it assumes the agency has access to the accounts, which the contract must expressly provide for. |
| Virtual assistant (VA) | Remote contractor who takes over planning, publishing or administration. The same status question arises as for the chatter. |
Money and payments: where the money comes from, where it goes
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Gross income, net income | Gross is what fans pay; net is what remains after the platform's commission. Agency contracts must state which of the two the agency commission is calculated on. |
| Split | How net income is divided between the creator and the agency or manager, expressed as a percentage. A split must be read together with what it includes (chatting, content, advertising) and what it excludes; the clauses to check are listed separately. |
| Payout | Transfer from the platform to the creator's bank account or wallet. Currency, minimum amount and frequency depend on the platform and the country. Our comparison of OnlyFans payouts sets out the options. |
| Pending earnings | The delay between the sale and the money becoming available, designed to absorb refunds and disputes. Seven days at Fanvue and Fansly; from 7 to 60 days at MYM depending on the product. |
| Chargeback | A fan disputing a payment with their bank. The platform can deduct the creator's share of the disputed amount; a high chargeback rate can lead to fees or account closure. |
| Payment institution, EMI | Licensed institutions that hold accounts and execute payments without being banks; an EMI (electronic money institution) also issues electronic money. Funds are protected by segregation or insurance, not by the deposit guarantee scheme. The banks and EMIs that accept OnlyFans change often: we keep the list current without publishing it. |
| De-risking, high-risk | An institution's decision to refuse or close accounts in a sector considered risky, adult content included. A frozen or closed account is the first accident in the life of an OFM business. |
| Electronic wallet | Account held by a non-bank provider, often offshore, offered by some platforms as a payout option. Fast, but harder to explain to a bank. |
| USDT, USDC | Dollar-backed stablecoins, used between agencies, creators and chatters to pay abroad. No major platform requires them; their use is regulated and taxable. |
| Commission invoice | The document by which the agency invoices its commission to the creator, or by which an incorporated creator invoices the platform. Without an invoice, a split is just an unexplained transfer. |
Law and tax: the words that bind
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Management contract | Services contract between a creator and an agency: services, commission, term, exclusivity, ownership of the account, exit. What is not in it does not exist. |
| Promoting prostitution | The family of offences aimed at anyone who arranges, controls or profits from in-person sexual services: pandering and promoting prostitution in the United States, causing or controlling prostitution for gain under sections 52 and 53 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in the United Kingdom. Managing online content does not fall within them as a matter of principle: United States, United Kingdom. |
| FOSTA-SESTA | The US statute of 11 April 2018 that narrowed Section 230 immunity and created 18 U.S.C. § 2421A: owning, managing or operating an interactive computer service with intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person, up to ten years. Intent is the whole question. |
| § 2257 records | The US record-keeping obligation on producers of sexually explicit content: verified proof of age, legal and stage names, indexed and retained, for every person appearing on camera. Not optional, and no contract survives getting it wrong. |
| Misclassification | Treating as an independent contractor someone the law regards as an employee or a worker. Decided on the reality of the relationship, not the label: control, opportunity for profit or loss, substitution, integration. It costs back wages, overtime and contributions. The tests. |
| ABC test | The stricter state test, used in California and elsewhere: a worker is an employee unless the hiring entity proves all three of freedom from control, work outside the usual course of its business, and an independently established trade. For a chatting agency, prong B is generally fatal. |
| W-2 / 1099-NEC | The two US forms that say how someone is engaged: W-2 for an employee, 1099-NEC for a contractor paid above the reporting threshold, which rose to $2,000 for 2026. Issuing a 1099 does not, by itself, make anyone a contractor. |
| Self-employment tax | The US 15.3% covering Social Security and Medicare, paid by the self-employed on 92.35% of net profit, from $400 of net earnings. Separate from income tax. The detail. |
| Self Assessment | The UK annual return for the self-employed, filed and paid by 31 January, plus Class 4 National Insurance and payments on account. Registration is required above the £1,000 trading allowance. The detail. |
| Platform reporting | The obligation on OnlyFans and its competitors to send seller identity and income to the tax authorities: HMRC since 1 January 2024, EU member states under DAC7, US platforms via Forms 1099-NEC. For services, the UK rules have no minimum threshold. |
| Tax residence | Where a state considers you to live for tax purposes, decided on facts — home, family, main activity, centre of economic interests — and not on a count of days abroad. Getting it wrong is the most expensive mistake in any relocation. |
| Image rights, release | The right to control the use of one's image. Using it requires written consent, precise as to media, duration and territory. An unlimited assignment signed in an agency contract is a warning sign. |
| KYC, AML | Know your customer: identifying and verifying the client, then the purpose of the relationship and the source of funds, required of banks, EMIs and platforms under anti-money-laundering rules — the Bank Secrecy Act in the US, the Money Laundering Regulations in the UK. Preparing a file avoids a freeze. |
| SAR | Suspicious activity report: the confidential report an institution files with its financial intelligence unit — FinCEN in the US, the National Crime Agency in the UK. The client is never told: an account closed without explanation is sometimes the consequence. |
Safety and image: what protects the creator
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Leak | Unauthorised sharing of paid content on third-party sites or Telegram. It is fought through copyright takedown notices and, in most jurisdictions, through the offences covering non-consensual distribution of intimate images. What to do about a leak. |
| DMCA notice | The takedown procedure under 17 U.S.C. § 512 for hosts and search engines in the United States, the fastest route for a creator who owns the copyright in her content. Comparable notice-and-takedown mechanisms exist in the UK and the EU. |
| Deepfake | Content generated or altered by an algorithm to depict a person. Sexual deepfakes are now specifically criminalised in a growing number of jurisdictions, and in the United States the TAKE IT DOWN Act obliges platforms to remove non-consensual intimate imagery, including synthetic imagery, on notice. |
| Watermark | A visible or invisible mark applied to each piece of content, making it possible to identify the account a leak came from. Absent from most beginners' setups, required by any serious agency. |
| Age verification, age assurance | The obligation on services distributing pornographic content to verify that visitors are adults. In the UK, Ofcom has required "highly effective age assurance" since 25 July 2025; in the US, around twenty-seven states impose verification since Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. The detail. |
| Written consent, release | Document signed by anyone appearing in a piece of content, confirming they are an adult and consent to it. Fanvue, for example, requires for each person an identity document and a signed, dated written consent, to be produced on request. |
| Online Safety Act 2023 | The UK statute that gives Ofcom power over user-to-user services and services publishing pornography, including the age assurance duties enforced since 25 July 2025, with penalties up to the greater of £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue. |
| Doxxing | Publishing the real identity, address or contact details of an anonymous creator. Depending on the case it amounts to invasion of privacy and harassment, and it is guarded against in advance: an account in a company's name, a registered office address, a strict separation of identities. |
How to use this glossary
Three uses. For a creator receiving a contract, to check that every word used is defined in the contract itself, and not only in the manager's mouth: split, exclusivity, ownership of the account. For a manager starting out, to understand that the terms in the third and fourth families are the ones the bank, the tax authority and the judge will use; better to have read them beforehand. For an agency director, to see that each acronym corresponds to a document to produce: contract, invoice, consent, platform statement, KYC file.
The glossary will change with the industry and with the law. Worker classification rules are moving again, age assurance duties are spreading, and the platforms will change their payment rules once more. We update this page whenever a text changes; the verification date appears under the box at the top of the article.
Frequently asked questions
What is a chatter in OFM?
A chatter is the person who answers fan messages in the creator's place, to sell individual pieces of content and keep subscribers engaged. They most often work freelance, sometimes from abroad, and are paid by the hour or as a percentage of the sales they make. Their status is one of an agency's sensitive points: badly framed, it exposes the agency to reclassification as employment.
What does PPV mean on OnlyFans?
PPV stands for pay per view: content sold individually, generally inside a private conversation, on top of the subscription. The fan pays to unlock a photo, a video or a set of content. It is the main source of income for accounts run by an agency, because that is where chatting makes the difference.
What is the difference between split, commission and payout?
The commission is what the platform withholds on each payment from a fan (20% at OnlyFans). The split is the contractually agreed division of net income between the creator and her agency or manager. The payout is the transfer the platform sends to the creator's bank account or electronic wallet, in the currency and within the timeframes set out in its terms.
Platform reporting, EMI, KYC: why do these keep coming up?
Because they describe the three controls that frame money in this industry. Platform reporting is the obligation on OnlyFans and its competitors to send your income to the tax authorities — HMRC since January 2024 in the UK, Forms 1099-NEC in the US, DAC7 across the EU. KYC refers to the identity and source-of-funds checks that banks and platforms must carry out under anti-money-laundering rules. An EMI is an electronic money institution, an alternative to a traditional bank, subject to the same due diligence obligations.
Sources and legal texts
- 18 U.S.C. § 2421A — Promotion or facilitation of prostitution Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
- Sexual Offences Act 2003, section 53 (controlling prostitution for gain) legislation.gov.uk
- 18 U.S.C. § 2257 — Record keeping requirements Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
- 17 U.S.C. § 512 — Digital Millennium Copyright Act, takedown procedure Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
- Guidance on highly effective age assurance Ofcom, Online Safety Act 2023
- Independent contractor (self-employed) or employee? Internal Revenue Service
- Selling goods or services on a digital platform GOV.UK, reporting rules in force since 1 January 2024
- Bank Secrecy Act / anti-money laundering requirements FinCEN
Your contactOlivier MaciejewskiFounder of OFM Legal · Former international business lawyer (HEC Paris, Arendt, Clifford Chance) · Official MYM partnerHis background Updated June 9, 2026
This article is general information and does not replace advice tailored to your situation. OFM Legal is not a law firm: court proceedings are handled by our partner lawyers.
