The State of CBD in eCommerce
These days you can’t throw a rock without hitting some new CBD infused product. From coffee to lotion, product designers are creating every kind of CBD product. Despite the proliferation of these products into the marketplace, the permissibility of cannabis-based products across the eCommerce landscape is very unclear and confusing.
When considering an ecommerce solution for a CBD-based product, you need to carefully consider two things:
- eCommerce Platform / Hosting — The product/service you use to create product pages, accept orders, and many other things.
- Payment Gateway — The product/service you use to accept credit card payments.
Many people get these two things confused because they assume that they’re the same thing, which is understandable because many ecommerce platforms do offer a built-in payment gateway solution. But as you’ll find out further on, a platform can allow CBD products, but their built-in payment gateway may not.
CBD eCommerce Platforms / Hosting
Your eCommerce platform is the software you use to create your website and manage your products, orders, and a myriad of other services as well. Usually, it provides the checkout functionality, but where it stops, and your payment gateway comes in, is the portion of the checkout that processes credit card transactions.
Shopify
On a global level, Shopify doesn’t have a public stance on CBD, but in Canada, where recreational cannabis has recently been legalized, they explicitly allow it. But many people might be confused by that because Shopify’s built-in payment gateway (powered by Stripe), does not allow any cannabis products.
So you’re able to sell CBD products on the Shopify eCommerce platform, but you’ll have to find an alternative payment gateway that allows CBD products and supports Shopify. (More about payment gateway options later on.)
BigCommerce
BigCommerce recently started specifically promoting the fact they allow CBD products to be sold on their eCommerce platform.
But different from Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t have a built-in payment gateway, and they don’t have fees on top of using your own payment gateway. And because one of Shopify’s largest revenue generators is in their payment solutions, they have fewer payment gateways available. And the alternative payment gateways they do support often have issues because Shopify isn’t incentivized to support them.
As a result of BigCommerce not having a built-in payment gateway, they have more direct relationships and support for alternative payment gateways than Shopify (like Square payments) because they’re not in competition with them.
WooCommerce (Wordpress)
When the state of CBD permissibility on SaaS platforms was a little more unsure, WooCommerce was the platform of choice for startup CBD retailers because it’s based on Wordpress, which is an open-source product that’s relatively easy to set up, but you’re also able to choose any hosting solution. All this means you have more control and less worry about getting “kicked off” the platform as many CBD retailers on Shopify were in the past. You should still check with your specific host to make sure they don’t have any restrictions, but there are thousands of hosting solutions for WooCommerce. WooCommerce is still a popular choice, but as other platforms are opening up and making their positions on CBD less opaque, it’s not necessarily a clear choice anymore.
Magento Commerce
Magento is an open-source product, similar to WooCommerce that you’re able to choose your host, so you have a similar level of control with a more powerful and flexible ecommerce platform than WooCommerce.
However, many merchants might be confused by Magento’s stance on CBD because they quietly stated they don’t allow CBD products on Magento Cloud. But Magento Cloud is essentially just Magento’s Enterprise product and a hosting solution combined. They still allow CBD products to be sold on a host of their choosing, whether it be Magento Open Source or Magento’s Enterprise product.
Others
There are many other eCommerce platforms popping up like Squarespace and Square which do not have a public stance on CBD products, but even if you choose one of those platforms, you still have to make sure your payment gateway allows it.
CBD Support Among Payment Gateways
Your payment gateway is the service that accepts customers’ credit card numbers, processes the payment, and deposits the funds into your account. So while you might be able to list CBD products online most places, if you don’t have a payment gateway that allows it you’re at immediate risk for being suspended from accepting payments.
Stripe
Stripe has been a major player in the eCommerce payments industry for a while, so virtually every major eCommerce platform supports it. Shopify uses it on the backend as its default payment gateway. Stripe has a zero-tolerance policy for cannabis products of any kind, including CBD. As such a big US processor and with it still being illegal on the federal level in the US, don’t expect that to change until federal laws in the US change, which will probably come sometime in the future, but as people know, the wheels of government turn very slowly.
PayPal
PayPal is currently lobbying the US federal government to pass the SAFE Banking Act, which would allow banks and payment processors to handle money related to the sales of cannabis products, without legal risk.
But currently, PayPal, similar to Stripe, has a zero-tolerance policy for cannabis products. And if they detect you’re selling cannabis or CBD products through PayPal, they’ll immediately suspend your account.
Authorize.net Resellers / Merchant Accounts
Before Stripe, Authorize.net was one of the most widely used payment gateways online. Authorize.net itself doesn’t explicitly allow or forbid CBD products to be sold through their gateway, but Authorize.net splits their payment processing between the gateway (Authorize.net) and a separate merchant account.
Various Authorize.net merchant accounts have different rules on CBD based products. There a number who do explicitly allow CBD products to be sold, but their merchant fees are typically very high due (sometimes 10–15%) to the increased risk profile of those types of sales.
Square Payments
While Square has been around for a while in physical and POS sales, they’re a pretty newcomer into the online payment gateway space. Not to be confused with their eCommerce platform, they also have a separate payment gateway that can be used on Magento, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, but is currently unavailable on Shopify. They recently announced an invite-only CBD payments “beta” and the processing fees are reportedly a fraction of most other gateways.
More Info
We’re Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento partners so feel free to reach out to us at info@netalico.com if you’d like any more information or to discuss CBD sales in eCommerce.
Originally published at Netalico Commerce.
