Publishing pornography of someone without their consent is a crime.
The justice system sided with Hogan in the end and unless you're alleging bribery that's not a matter of who paid, but that the trial was brought to its conclusion instead of settling out of court because the multinational publishing corporation won the money fight, something enabled by Thiel's money, but also something that shouldn't have been necessary in the first place.
MC and Visa are not technically payment processors, that would be stuff like stripe or ayden.
The problem is that cc companies have rules that put the onus of ensuring nothing illegal is purchased with their issued cards on the ones actually meditating the transaction, so it becomes a chilling effect because the intermediaries don't want to risk burning a bridge with the largest cc networks in the world, and overcorrect as a result.