Any shopify payment gateway list you find in a blog post was accurate on the day someone wrote it and has been decaying since. Integrations change, policies change, and appetite for hemp and CBD changes quietly. The platform’s own app directory is the only current version, and even that answers a different question than you are asking.
Gateway, acquirer, sponsor bank
Three parties hide behind one logo, and the difference decides your outcome.
The gateway is plumbing. It carries an authorisation request from your checkout to the networks and the response back. It is a technical product and it rarely cares what you sell.
The acquirer holds your merchant account and owns the risk. It decides whether your catalogue is acceptable, whether a reserve applies, and whether your account stays open. Behind it sits a sponsor bank that sets which categories the acquirer may write at all.
So when a directory shows you a gateway, it has answered a plumbing question. Your real question, which is who will underwrite hemp-derived products, sits one or two parties further back and is never in the directory. Our CBD payment gateway page works through that split in more detail.
How to build your own shopify payment gateway list
Open a sheet with six columns and fill one row per candidate. It sounds tedious. It takes an afternoon and it replaces months of guessing.
| Column | What you record | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Gateway name, and the acquirer behind it | A name with no acquirer behind it is a reseller you cannot verify |
| Catalogue answer | Which of your products they confirm, named individually | Anything left unnamed is the item that unwinds the account |
| Integration type | Embedded checkout or offsite redirect | Redirects cost conversions and look wrong on your own brand |
| Money terms | Rate structure, reserve, term, exit, chargeback fee | Offers separate here, long after the headline stops mattering |
| Operational fit | Refunds, partial captures, recurring billing, reporting | Missing one of these gets discovered at the worst time |
| Policy source | The URL of their own published policy, and the date you read it | It is the only version that binds anyone, and it ages |
The last column is the one nobody keeps and everybody needs. Dating your source turns a vague memory into a fact you can re-check.
The rows people leave blank
Reserve terms, and exit terms. Both feel awkward to ask about early and both are painful to discover late.
For a reserve, you want three specifics in writing: the amount held, the form it takes, and the exact condition that releases it. For the exit, you want the term length, any early termination cost, and what happens to funds in flight when you leave. A provider comfortable answering those is telling you something useful about how they operate.
Ask about closure too. Not because anyone expects it, but because the answer tells you whether the relationship is built for a category that occasionally attracts attention. More on why this category attracts it at all is in our piece on choosing a processor for CBD.
Two entries that should never make your sheet
Anything promising guaranteed approval. Approval sits with an acquiring bank that has not read your file yet, so a guarantee made before that reading is not the guarantor’s to give.
And cashless ATM setups. These present a card purchase as a cash withdrawal, which miscodes the transaction, and the card networks have acted against the practice. We do not sell them and we would tell you to walk away from anyone offering one. The wider explanation is on our cashless ATM risks page.
What to have ready before you fill the sheet
Your real catalogue, written out completely, including the products that make up a small share of revenue. Those are the ones that change an underwriting answer.
Then your certificates of analysis showing products meet the 0.3% delta-9 THC dry weight threshold that defines hemp under the 2018 Farm Bill, your formation documents, any state licences your products require, and your site copy read the way an underwriter reads it. Everything that comes next runs on that file. The Shopify-specific route through all of it is on our Shopify CBD payments page, and common questions sit on our FAQ.
Frequently asked questions
Why not just publish the list yourselves? Because it would be wrong within weeks, and a stale policy presented as current is as damaging as an invented one. What we can do is point you at each provider’s own published policy and tell you which clauses matter, which stays true as the policies change.
Is the gateway or the acquirer the one that declines me? Almost always the acquirer, or the sponsor bank behind it. The gateway is a technical connection. If a decline arrives with no explanation, ask which party made the decision, since it determines whether a different gateway would change anything.
Does using two gateways confuse my accounting? It adds a reconciliation step and modern reporting handles it. Weigh that against losing all card acceptance at once. Most sellers who have been through a closure decide the extra reconciliation was cheap.
How often should I re-check the policy column? Quarterly is a reasonable rhythm, and immediately after any change to what you sell. Adding a new cannabinoid or a new format can move you outside terms that covered you perfectly well the month before.