3D Shards

One less store to look at then.

They won't say why PayPal was removed, but I suspect it has to do with availability of adult content. PayPal *will not* process any product marked "adult", and is why adult-branded sites all use shady pay options.

You know, that's a good question. I suppose the items are not specifically marked?

From PayPal's FAQ:

We permit U.S.-only transactions for certain sexually oriented physical goods that are physically delivered to the customer. Videos, DVDs, and magazines are examples of physical goods. We don't allow transactions for such goods outside the U.S.

We don't permit PayPal account holders to buy or sell:

Sexually oriented digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium. Examples of digital goods include downloadable pictures or videos and website subscriptions.
Sexually oriented goods or services that involve, or appear to involve, minors.
Services whose purpose is to facilitate meetings for sexually oriented activities.

We don’t factor in sexual preferences and viewpoints when determining what our policy prohibits.

In deciding what sexually oriented goods and services to allow, we consider:

Regulations or restrictions placed on the purchase or sale of the product.
The product’s classification by a recognized ratings board.
Whether the product describes or depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way.
The dominant theme of the product material or website.
The literary, artistic, political, or scientific value of the product.
Potential medicinal or educational uses for the product.
The product's impact on the safety of our customers.

3D models fall under the realm of "digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium". I ran into this problem with Booth, as certain products are specifically marked as adult content, and could not be bought through PayPal. A bank card was needed.
As far as "dominant theme of the product material or website" goes, RenderHub is fairly generic, but Renderotica is... well, yeah. This is a bit of a head-scratcher.
In any event, I'm not running to PayPal to tattle on them :p
Shards is still a mystery, but they say no PP, so, there's that. I don't use them myself, so I'm not too heartbroken.

You're not buying directly from Renderotica. The storefront you buy from is called CGBytes. It has nothing that would set off the CC processors alarms as anything 'adult' is not mentioned.
This recent blitz of CC processors banning anything adult is not because they've all found Jesus or gotten a sudden case of morality. There's a few concurrent factors going on.

The courts and governments are becoming more brazen about holding companies liable for non-consensual material or stuff that might be considered harmful. This means lawsuits...BIG ones. They'll go after anyone enabling the download of it including the cc processors.

Defaults on C cards are increasing a lot and the folks who pay for porn are statistically more likely to go broke.

Stolen and hacked cc's are primarily used to access porn. Cc owners aren't held liable for these charges so the processor has to eat the cost.

I haven't heard if this has hit the mainstream porn sites yet but if it does, it'll kill them.

I whole heartedly agree that AI has temporarily ruined art, but I don't see it being responsible for the payment problems. The sites, similarly to what Renderotica has done, will find easy and simple workarounds.

The AI stuff seems to be circling itself with renders becoming increasingly similar and boring. Each person doing it massages his/her prompts till they get exactly what they want, then fills their DA site with hundreds or thousands of pictures that are almost identical. Very few are doing stuff that's worth looking at. It would also be nice if the engines offered a variety of characters. You can easily tell which engine has been used since the characters are all the same.

Musk was one of the people who started it but he sold his interest in it to Ebay 23 years ago.
See the wiki.