There are tons of CBD and Hemp stores using Shopify to sell their products but I’m constantly seeing Facebook groups flood up with entrepreneurs getting the ban hammer quicker than their store starts to grow. I’ll show you how to sell CBD oil via Shopify.
Can I Sell CBD Oil On Shopify?
The main problem is not Shopify, it’s your payment processor.
Shopify do care about where your business is based and if the state is legal to buy said product. You also should ensure your terms and conditions state the delivery states where the products are legal. Failure to do so will guarantee closure of your store.
By default Shopify uses their own payment merchant called Shopify payments but this is actually underwritten by Stripe in disguise. Unfortunately Stripe doesn’t agree with processing CBD oil products and you’ll quickly get an email from their investigations team if you start to use them.
Shopify recently confirmed this on their community forums.
If you have any concerns about your CBD ingredients then you’ll need to send Shopify an email. It’s likely you’ll get a denied email back.
After reading through Shopify’s terms and conditions, there is no restriction on the listing of CBD or Hemp products.
Shopify is simply a web portal and without a payment processor it could simply be a standard HTML website.
On December 20th 2018, Hemp was officially removed from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and is deemed an agricultural commodity and can no longer be mistaken for a controlled substance such as marijuana.
The CSA has stated this should relax the rules put in place by regulated institutions such as banks, merchant services, credit companies, e-commerce sites and platforms to allow for hemp to be actively promoted and sold online.
As of the time of this article, there appears to be no movement from Shopify or Stripe, yet anyway.
How To Sell CBD Oil via Shopify Store
As outlined the problem with Shopify is their payment provider Stripe. Now there are other alternatives available to you.
One of the biggest processors of hemp and CBD products is called Banc Certified Merchant Services (BCMS)
Another is called Leap Payments.
Both offer higher than normal fees but what other alternative do you have?
Instabill and Payment Cloud both offer services too.
Last Updated on January 22, 2019 by Rhys Dale
Rhys is the owner and chief editor at Im Rhys and is living in Chisinau, Moldova. With over 15 years experience in eCommerce and Affiliate Marketing he has started many successful 6 and 7 figure businesses. After successes with USA and China dropshipping, he expanded into building 70+ micro affiliate websites in 30 different niches that generate money on autopilot. He now helps his wife to run her social media agency as well as travelling the world at every opportunity.
Shopify keeps blocking 3rd party processing integration tools. They want you with their sales partners and none are able to process risk industries, like CBD. I see this problem hinder businesses daily. Shouldn’t Shopify make their customers aware of this limitation they intentionally impose?
Yes . They don’t I started today andded one bottle cbd oil without thc and I received already the mail. I am gonna search another platform to use. Any suggestions? Thanks Johan
Shopify and many other shopping carts stop supporting CBD merchants because of the controversial opinions. While some shopping cart abandoning this Lucrative industry many find this an opportunity so there are many who start supporting this industry in all aspects. One of such Shopping cart is Cloudnet360, They also provide merchant account with shopping cart and they have big community of CBD merchants co-coordinating with each other to make it even better. They have big community to educate new CBD merchants opening and running their business. There are many artciles there but I found this one very helpful. https://www.cloudnet360.com/blog/choosing-the-correct-high-risk-merchant-account-for-your-cannabidiol-or-hemp-oil-business.html I hope it will help you as well.
Do we have any hard numbers on how well startup CBD online stores are doing their first few months?
not good at all shoulda started years ago
I made $1400 in 9 days on ebay selling handmade hempoil gummies—before they restricted my sells.
I also sold CBD on ebay and made great profit until they removed it all and sent a warning.
Why not just use your own website, not Shopify, that’s what I did.
what cc processor do you use, paypal and square shut down cbd merchants today
Any ideas if Cash app or Venmo would work?
Tony is 100% correct in his assessment. I am a Shopify approved Developer/Partner and also have a direct sales agency contract with Banc Certified Merchant Services whom I’ve worked with for years. The bottom line is that Shopify is making it very difficult for CBD sellers to integrate alternative payment processing solutions into their hosting platform. As of May 15, 2019 — Shopify began informing my CBD clients that they have to upgrade to Shopify Plus if they want to embed payment gateway API code into their website, hence bypassing their payment processors who do NOT offer credit card processing to CBD sellers. Guess what? The upgrade to Shopify Plus will cost the website owner $299.00 per month! That’s insane. It’s time to say, bye-bye to Shopify.
I am very curious to know what your new approach is?
Try LimeLight – http://www.getlimelight.com
They work with a variety of CBD companies and can also intro for CBD Merchant PRocessing
HI GUYS!!!
Just add my shopify CBD store running for a month, unfortunately i need to take payments by bank transfer 🙁 delayed my sales a lot and is very hard to keep track on everything, im just in contact with several payment providers, would you anyone advise a certain and quicker way to solve this issue?
You could look into merchant services from Zodaka. I understand they work like PayPal with slightly higher fees.
I have a cc processor if you are still in need of one? No dates on these posts.
This won’t be the answer some people are looking for but I rep a company that pays residual income plus we have our own payment processor so no problem.
I work with several CBD companies (about 30 of them) for website development and marketing. I moved them all over to Leap payments and it was actually cheaper than what they were paying at Square. Also, they use standard gateway integrations like NMI and Authorize.net, so that made my job a lot easier lol.