Shopify CBD Rules: Can You Sell CBD on Shopify and How to Get Paid
Shopify hosts CBD stores and will not process their payments. What the hemp requirements commit you to, what a third-party gateway costs on each plan, and how to get through its underwriting.
- By the OpenGate underwriting desk
- Updated
- 11 min read
Shopify CBD rules rest on two facts. Shopify lets you sell hemp-derived CBD where the law permits it, once you agree to its hemp requirements. Shopify Payments does not support hemp, CBD or THC products, so every CBD store needs a third-party payment provider and pays Shopify a transaction fee on those sales, 0.2% to 2% by plan in October 2026. This article covers the attestation, the fee math and what the provider’s underwriter asks for.
In this guide
Can you sell CBD on Shopify?
Yes. Shopify’s hemp pages say it supports the sale of hemp and hemp-derived products when the laws of both your store’s location and the shipping destination permit it. US merchants selling hemp and Canadian merchants selling cannabis must agree to a set of requirements first, and Shopify treats a breach of them as a breach of its Terms of Service, with store termination as the upper limit. CBD is one line in a wider map; Shopify restricted products places it beside vapes, firearms and other categories.
The platform accepts the store and then narrows what the store can use. As of October 2026 Shopify’s hemp pages list these limits:
- Payments. Shopify Payments is unavailable for hemp, CBD and THC products.
- Notifications. SMS order and shipping notifications are not supported for hemp products, only email.
- Shipping. You can buy shipping labels when the carrier allows the product, and it is on you to confirm that with the carrier.
- In person. Shopify POS works, without any hardware that requires Shopify Payments; you need a card reader from your own payment provider.
Shopify also defines its terms narrowly. On its pages, hemp-derived products means CBD products permitted under the 2018 Farm Bill; for Canada, the term covers hemp and cannabis products permitted under the Cannabis Act. That Act regulates CBD as cannabis whatever its source, and the Canada page sets out who may sell it online.
What the Shopify hemp attestation commits you to
It commits the business, through an owner with authority to bind it, to a list of compliance statements and to proving them on request. Merchants call it the hemp attestation; Shopify publishes it as the requirements for selling hemp in the United States. In substance you confirm that:
- You are the owner and can bind the business, and the address in your admin is the state you operate from.
- Your jurisdiction permits the online sale of hemp, and you hold every state and local license it requires.
- Your products contain no more than 0.3% THC by dry weight, or less where state or local law says so.
- They were sourced, processed, tested, labeled and marketed in line with all applicable federal, state and local laws, and are legal everywhere you sell them.
- You make no medicinal, disease or therapeutic claims unless FDA has approved the claim for that product category.
- You will pull any recalled product at once and stop taking orders for it.
- You will tell Shopify in writing within ten days of an FDA or FTC enforcement action, a warning letter or a class action demand.
- You will hand over documentation whenever Shopify asks.
Point 3 still reads 0.3% THC on the page we checked on October 9, 2026. Point 4 is the one that moves. Congress has rewritten the federal definition of hemp: in the new text THCA counts toward THC, and a finished product may hold no more than 0.4 mg of total THC per container. As the law stood in October 2026, that test applies from December 11, 2026. Because you attest to all applicable federal laws, the new definition binds your store on the day it applies, whether or not Shopify edits its page. The dates and the arithmetic are in the federal hemp ban guide.
Why Shopify Payments is not available for CBD stores
Shopify excludes the category from its own processing and sends you to outside providers. Shopify Payments has a prohibited list of its own: as of October 2026 the Shopify Payments eligibility page names cannabis and related products among the regulated categories it cannot support. The help page titled Payment options for hemp sales on Shopify, in the hemp section, is more specific. It says Shopify Payments doesn’t support hemp, CBD and THC products, and that you can use any integrated third-party provider that is compatible with Shopify and supports these products.
Three details on that page matter before you choose:
- Shopify warns that not every provider it integrates accepts hemp, and that confirming it is your job.
- Shopify says providers weigh product type, business creation date, transaction history, volume and product mix, and that it cannot guarantee your store will be approved.
- If Shopify Payments was removed from your store because of hemp, you may keep the store and process through another provider, or remove the hemp products to stay on Shopify Payments.
Other mainstream processors draw a similar line. Stripe’s CBD policy restricts low-THC CBD to the cases Stripe approves and prohibits the rest.
That settles the platform question. The open one is the question Shopify hands off: which acquirer will underwrite your catalog, and on what terms.
What a third-party gateway costs on Shopify
You pay two parties: your processor for the transaction and Shopify for letting an outside provider sit in its checkout. Shopify’s third-party transaction fee depends on your plan, as shown on its pricing page in October 2026.
| Plan | Third-party transaction fee | Fee on $40,000 of monthly sales |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | 2% | $800 |
| Grow | 1% | $400 |
| Advanced | 0.6% | $240 |
| Plus | 0.2% | $80 |
Shopify applies the rate to the price of products minus discounts, plus tax and shipping. The fee is not returned when you refund an order, and POS orders and manual payment methods are exempt.
The plan choice becomes arithmetic. With Basic listed at $29 a month and Grow at $79 when billed yearly, Grow costs $50 more and saves 1% of sales, so it pays for itself above $5,000 a month. Advanced, listed at $299, costs $220 more than Grow and saves 0.4%, which breaks even at $55,000 a month. On monthly billing, at $39 and $105, the first break-even moves to $6,600. Check the current prices before you decide.
Then add the processor. Our indicative range for CBD on the pricing page is 4.5% to 7.5% of transaction value, an indication and never an offer. At an illustrative 5.5%, a store selling $40,000 a month pays $2,200 in processing. On the Grow plan the Shopify fee adds $400, for $2,600 in total, or 6.5% of sales. A rolling reserve is cash held back, separate from cost: at an illustrative 10%, $4,000 of each month’s sales is withheld and released later on the schedule in your offer. The rolling reserve guide shows how that balance builds and comes back.
How a third-party gateway connects to a Shopify store
Through Shopify’s payment settings, with credentials the provider issues once your account is approved. Shopify describes two kinds of card providers. With a direct provider, customers pay inside your store’s checkout. With an external provider, they complete the purchase on a page hosted outside your store. You activate either one from the Payments page of your Shopify admin.
Availability varies by provider and by country, and a provider has to be integrated with Shopify to appear in your admin at all. Before you sign with any gateway, ours included, get four answers in writing:
- Is it available in the Shopify admin for my store’s country, as a direct or an external provider?
- Does it work with the subscription app I use for rebills?
- Can I refund and capture from the Shopify order screen?
- Which acquirer stands behind it, and has that acquirer approved hemp for my file?
The same four questions apply to any high-risk merchant account for Shopify, whatever the vertical.
What the gateway’s underwriter asks a Shopify CBD store
The underwriter checks that the store, the lab reports and the application describe the same business. The standard CBD file is covered in the CBD payment processing guide. On a Shopify store, the review concentrates on what the theme and the apps expose:
- Product pages. Each CBD product needs a matching certificate of analysis and, for US sales, a total THC figure in milligrams per container.
- Descriptions, blog posts and imported reviews. A review app that pulls in a customer’s claim about a disease puts a medical claim on your page.
- The age gate, and whether it appears on the first visit and again at checkout.
- Shipping profiles. Shopify lets you restrict destinations by product; the underwriter wants the list of blocked states and a test order showing the block works.
- Subscriptions. The rebill price, the frequency and the cancellation path must be visible before the customer pays.
- History. Without statements from a previous processor, a Shopify order export for three to six months stands in for volume and refunds, and the reserve is sized more cautiously.
- Sourcing. If you dropship, the supplier agreement and the supplier’s lab reports for the exact products you list. The setup for a store without stock is in how to start a dropshipping business.
Some stores do not get through. Hemp acquirers commonly decline a catalog that presents THC products as CBD, a dropshipped range with no lab reports behind it, and a merchant who took CBD payments through a mainstream processor under generic product names and plans to continue. The first two can be repaired. The third is a pattern that acquirers read as concealment.
What to prepare before you apply
Put the store in the state you want an underwriter to see, then assemble the file: your company and ownership documents, the product list with lab reports, the list of blocked states, your subscription terms, a Shopify order export or processor statements for the last three to six months, and the store’s web address. The vertical’s requirement list is on our CBD and hemp page.
With that in hand, send your Shopify CBD file. An underwriter reads it and replies within 1 business day. You get a written offer stating the rate, the reserve and the monthly limit, or the list of missing documents, or a refusal with its reason. Applying costs nothing. Ask at the same time how the gateway would connect to your Shopify checkout: the offer lists the capabilities that apply to your file.