The guidelines are advisory only and are a response to increasing concern about "extreme" content on the internet. According to the Guardian newspaper the guidelines state:
"Banks provide facilities to internet merchants that enable them to accept card payments for content and merchandise. [We] deplore the abuse of these facilities on ethical, legal and sound business grounds.
"Banks will not knowingly do business with internet sites that sell content/merchandise inciting, advocating or perpetuating activities such as child pornography, racism, terrorism and violence against persons, including scenes of sexual violence."
"We are not setting ourselves up as moral arbiters," Sandra Quinn, a spokeswoman for APACS, told the Guardian. "But we have to be sure we are doing all we can about preventing the spread of such extreme images.
"We had no objections from our members on the grounds of [whether this was] censorship. But we don't want to be any more prescriptive. It's a grey area," she added.