Of all the sexual fetishes in the world, financial domination has perhaps one of the most glamourous images.

Beautiful women are sent money and lavished with expensive gifts by men who want next-to-nothing in return - it’s all about submitting to the dominant woman and relinquishing control over your finances.

Much like physical forms of BDSM, it’s this surrendering of power that is arousing. But in the majority of cases, the dominatrix (domme) and the submissive never meet - it's all done online.

Some financial domination (or findom) relationships consist of one-off payments, others are regimented regular transferrals of money and some men even hand over passwords and total control of their bank accounts to a domme, asking her to devise a minimal budget too.

But what’s the attraction for the men? We asked a self-proclaimed submissive - or “cash-pig,” as the men are known - to explain.

“The arousal factor comes from the thought of the domme invading the personal space that is your finances,” Steve* explains. “People measure their self worth with their money and so utilise it as a method of psychological self harm.”

Indeed, in our society we are largely defined by our money, and it’s often the marker men use to compare themselves to others.

“Financial domination scoops up this notion of human beings and weaponises it as something kinky. It's intimacy, in a very capitalistic and masochistic way,” Steve explains.

He believes that most submissives get into findom due to low self-esteem, and they have an “inability to deal with rejection, humiliation, loneliness, fear of being unwanted and redundant in today’s rapid-paced society.”

According to Steve, when a submissive is discussing the transfer of money with his domme, he enters “the zone” which is “where he is free from all his woes and worries,” and becomes aroused.

“But as soon as that’s over he comes crashing back down to earth with a hole in his wallet and a head full of regret,” Steve tells The Independent.

“Findom is merely another form of escapism for people who struggle with everyday life in this bizarre cash- and self-obsessed modern society.”

Another reason many men get into findom is purely because they so rarely get the opportunity to talk to a woman one-on-one, and that’s all they want.

The dommes aren’t kind to the so-called ‘cash-pigs,’ but most of the men would rather pay to be spoken down to by a woman than be ignored entirely.

A typical submissive would be a young man under the age of 35, but there are older men into findom too. Steve says some have families and partners too.

Most men find their dommes through websites such as findom.com and Twitter, where young women advertise their services.

It’s considered easy money, but this means supply now outstrips demand, according to Steve.

Whilst findom used to be just another service that a traditional dominatrix would offer and it was thus very niche and inaccessible, the advent of the internet has revolutionised the scene.

“All you need is a twitter account, a means of accepting payment, a few selfies of you acting rebellious and defiant and the confidence to hurl a few insults to strangers over the internet,” Steve explains.

He says that findom in 2017 is defined by the plethora of young woman bragging aggressively on Twitter, but adds that “there is a stark difference between a financial dominatrix and a mean girl demanding money.

“The former is in fact much much rarer, despite many declaring that they are one.”

True, the top dommes spend years establishing their personas and honing their skills that make men want to send them money - and become aroused doing so.

One such domme is Maitresse Madeline, who hit the headlines in 2014 when an anonymous man paid her $42,000 (£33,500) for an hour-long webcam session. What’s more, he declined the cam session after transferring the money, then disappeared.

The majority of dommes are young women, and Steve says a growing proportion are under 25, lured in by the premise of easy money without really knowing what they’re getting themselves into - of course, everything online can be recorded.

But this influx of young women has created tension between them and the more experienced dommes, who can be hostile to the newbies finding their feet.

In recent years, findom has increasingly been viewed as a way to empower women and manipulate weak men, but Steve doesn’t think this is the case.

“Ultimately, a submissive hands over his money to a domme because he wants to use her as a tool to access some emotions that provide him with a chemical high that only comes from feeding his addiction to self destructive behaviour,” he explains.

It's not clear who's really manipulating who.

A typical findom cam session might involve blackmail ‘games’ such as one in which a submissive hands over private information or photographs under the agreement that he must pay a pre-arranged tariff to keep the sensitive information safe.

But of course, the submissive could simply take somebody else’s information.

Steve believes the way many dommes speak to their ‘cash-pigs’ could be considered “consensual hate preaching,” which is a huge risk to take in an era where viral videos and online shamings can ruin a person’s life.

What’s more, dommes who earn a sizeable sum of money could be considered to have an additional income, on which they likely aren’t paying tax.

That said, the majority of women who dip their toes into the water of findom give up before they make any substantial amounts of money, Steve believes.

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“Findom is an extremely dangerous activity and there is actually quite a lot of responsibility for dommes that most fail to understand,” he says.

But of course, there are risks for the submissives too: financial ruin, addiction, loss of property, increasing debt levels, anxiety, psychological and physical harm (mostly through self-torture tasks, according to Steve).

And there’s also the impact on real life personal relationships, which often fall apart when someone finds out about a loved one’s penchant for findom.

Despite this, Steve believes findom is becoming increasingly mainstream and dommes are going to more and more bizarre lengths to compete with other women and attract the attention of submissive men.

Humans have always had a bizarre relationship with money because it’s so linked to power. Much like some men love spoiling women, others love handing over control of their finances - so much so that it’s sexually arousing.

And even though he’s part of the world, Steve believes there are no winners when it comes to findom: “It's a sad state of affairs when men are aroused at the thought of paying women to role-play female empowerment for their own pseudo-sexual satisfaction,” he says.