The ever popular and exploding market of CBD might well be the perfect solution to contribute towards your positive health or wellbeing, unless of course you are one of the many providers that find it difficult in finding a suitable provider for merchant services that will not terminate you once they find out what products you sell.

With the market expected to grow by 21.2% from $2.8 Billion in 2020 by 2028 its safe to say that CBD is here to stay. So, finding a payment processor to assist you with your CBD business to enable you to take payment sustainably is paramount to your CBD businesses success.

With the industry absolutely booming with CBD now available to consumers in multiple forms. We have seen it in Protein powder, Drops, Drinks and even Gummy Bears, yet one of the most common phone calls we get through to our high risk department at ePayment Solutions is if we can help obtaining a merchant account as the current provider has terminated.

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WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FIND A PAYMENTS PROVIDER FOR CBD?

At the time of writing this CBD is still a relatively new product and although 100% legal the relation to Cannabis is what ultimately stops an acquirer looking to accept payments for CBD. Therefore, you will almost find it impossible to get a provider for seeds and the like as acquirers just see this as too much of a reputational risk for them to take.

However, some high-risk acquirers have entered the UK space and are accepting payments for CBD if the supplier can jump through a certain set of criteria. Modern World Business Solutions are proud to have helped multiple CBD brands obtain payments for their businesses.

Here are a few things you should know before you start with your application:

It is a timely process! – We do things properly at Modern World Business Solutions, whilst this might take a little longer to get your application fully approved, you are safe in the knowledge that the acquirer has underwritten you fully and you can sleep at night knowing you will not be terminated. We anticipate a full application to be accepted for payments for your CBD business might take between 4-6 weeks.

All products must be below 0.2 THC and all lab reports for all products MUST be provided with the application.

It’s very likely that a Rolling reserve might be applied, this means the acquirer will retain a % of your takings and deposit them after 180 days – this is to reduce exposure to chargebacks.

If you are a start-up business looking for payments in CBD then you will need to provide the below: *Cash flow forecast *Business plan *Proof of Stock purchase *Lab reports on all products If you are a business looking for an alternative solution to accept payments, then you will need to provide us with 6 months acquiring statements.

The rates that you will be offered will NOT be the same as the low-risk applications you will see and will often be on what’s called Interchange +. This means this is the acquirer’s margin on top of charges that Visa and Mastercard apply to the acquirer. Rates can be anything from 2% to 5% depending on your business history and transactional history.

There will be a High-Risk registration fee of $500 to register your CBD business to Mastercard.

For us to help with your CBD merchant account your business will need to be registered within Europe and the main directors residing in Europe also.

If you are a start-up – be careful what platform you use to build your website and what shopping card you plug in – as the high-risk acquirers only certify with some gateways, you can look at our solutions here!

Getting a subscription model approved or a recurring transaction for CBD is very difficult, we would advise winning the acquirers trust through good behaviour before attempting to add this solution.

You will need a business bank account for your CBD merchant account. It will need to match your legal business name, If you do not have this in place already then we can support you with this – take a look at our high risk bank accounts page.

This document will give any CBD company that is looking to accept payments an idea of what is required to get approval and all costs associated with getting your merchant account approved and up and running. If you would like any additional support regarding obtaining a merchant account for your CBD business, then please contact us by submitting the below form.

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naveed@epaymentsolutions.co.uk

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