Can I sell CBD and hemp products on Stripe, Shopify Payments or PayPal?
This is the one category of the fourteen where a mainstream processor says yes in writing, and the yes is narrower than most merchants read it as. Stripe permits CBD on stated conditions about THC content. Everything sold on the strength of being intoxicating sits outside that permission, whatever the label says.
Also searched as: CBD oil, hemp, delta-8, delta-9, THCA, hemp-derived.
Stripe
RestrictedNamed, and allowed only on stated conditions or in certain countries.
“CBD products containing only negligible amounts of THC, per local limits”
Named and permitted, conditionally. The condition is the whole ruling: "negligible amounts of THC, per local limits". A hemp-derived product engineered to be psychoactive is not a negligible-THC product, and describing it as compliant hemp on the packaging does not make the payments question go away.
Source: Stripe: Prohibited and restricted businesses. The policy states it was last updated 13 May 2026. We last read it on 27 August 2026. Check it yourself before you act on this: these lists change, and ours is a reading of theirs, not a substitute for it.
PayPal
Not namedAbsent from the policy entirely. This is not permission: it hands the decision to an underwriter, usually after you have money on the platform.
“narcotics, steroids, certain controlled substances or other products that present a risk to consumer safety”
PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy does not name CBD or hemp. In practice this is the clause applied, and PayPal has historically been the least predictable of the three on this category.
Source: PayPal: Acceptable Use Policy. The policy states it was last updated 29 October 2022. We last read it on 27 August 2026. Check it yourself before you act on this: these lists change, and ours is a reading of theirs, not a substitute for it.
Shopify Payments
RestrictedNamed, and allowed only on stated conditions or in certain countries.
No policy of its own
Inherited from Stripe, on the same THC condition. Shopify will host a hemp store on plans it sells while the payment side refuses the transaction, which is why merchants in this category so often have a working storefront and no way to take money through it.
Source: Shopify: Payment processor list. The document publishes no last-updated date. We last read it on 27 August 2026. Check it yourself before you act on this: these lists change, and ours is a reading of theirs, not a substitute for it.
What actually happens
The usual sequence is not a shutdown but a slow squeeze: approval on a general processor, then a review that reclassifies the catalogue once someone reads the product pages, then a rolling reserve. There is also a date on the horizon, and it is the most important thing on this page. The FY2026 agriculture appropriations act narrowed the federal definition of hemp, and the new definition takes effect on 12 November 2026. It replaces the delta-9-only threshold with a total-THC standard that counts THCA and delta-8, and adds a ceiling of 0.4 milligrams of total THC per finished container. Products that are lawful today are not all lawful under that definition. Processors move ahead of statutory deadlines rather than behind them, so the underwriting position on intoxicating hemp will tighten before the date rather than after it.
What works instead
If your THC content genuinely is negligible and your copy makes no health claims, Stripe's written permission is real and worth using. If your product sells because it is intoxicating, you need a hemp-specialist acquirer, and you need to be working on the November definition change now rather than in October. A category that gets reclassified underneath an existing merchant account is the version of this that ends badly, and the reclassification date is already fixed.
Want the version that accounts for your actual store?
This page is about CBD and hemp products as a category. Approval turns on your specific catalogue, your claims and your paperwork, and we will tell you where you stand whether or not it leads to work for us.
Both are free and neither is a sales call. The check asks for your web address and nothing else; the call is thirty minutes and ends with an answer whether or not it leads to work for us. Ready to start instead? Tell us what you sell.