The categories Shopify Payments declines. And who takes them.
Shopify Payments does not publish its own prohibited list — its terms delegate to the payment processor for your country, which in most of the world means Stripe. So "banned by Shopify" is usually "declined by a payment processor", and the fix depends entirely on which of those actually happened.
Selling CBD & hemp on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments will not touch it — but Shopify itself documents the way to sell it.
Selling Delta-8 & THCA on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Delta-8 and THCA are prohibited on Shopify Payments—but third-party processors openly compete for the volume.
Selling Cannabis seeds on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Seeds sit in legal limbo — and payment processors treat the intended use as the deciding fact.
Selling Research peptides on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Research peptides are prohibited on Shopify Payments, but some third-party processors will underwrite them.
Selling Supplements & vitamins on Shopify: Payments, Reserves &…
Shopify Payments declines most supplement merchants — the problem is your claims, not the category itself.
Selling Functional mushrooms on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Stripe flags mushroom supplements because psilocybin and amanita share the category — prove what you actually sell.
Selling Kava on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Kava is legal to sell in the US, but Stripe's explicit prohibition blocks Shopify Payments entirely.
Selling Nootropics on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Cognitive-enhancer claims and research-chemical status make Stripe decline most nootropics merchants outright.
Selling Weight loss on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Subscription weight loss products face the highest chargeback rates in nutra — and Shopify Payments knows it.
Selling Vapes & e-liquid on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Stripe restricts it outright—you need an acquirer who specialises in tobacco compliance.
Selling Nicotine pouches on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Nicotine pouches are restricted on Shopify Payments—most acquirers need age-gating proof and subscription controls.
Selling Firearms accessories on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Accessories are borderline legal to sell—but magazines and parts trigger blanket declines.
Selling Ammunition on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Ammunition sales are restricted on Shopify Payments and require a specialist processor.
Selling Firearms on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments declines it outright—but FFL dealers can process through specialists who underwrite firearms retail.
Selling Airsoft & airguns on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments declines replica firearms by appearance—even if they are legal where you sell.
Selling Medical devices on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments declines these — but your device class and registration status determine whether you can process at all.
Selling Contact lenses on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments treats contact lenses as restricted — they're prescription devices, and that complexity deters most acquirers.
Selling Gift cards & stored value on Shopify: Payments, Reserves &…
Gift card sales are restricted on Shopify Payments due to fraud and chargeback risk.
Selling Psychic & spiritual on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Stripe blocks it outright in some jurisdictions; elsewhere, the core issue is dispute rates on unverifiable outcomes.
Selling Subscription boxes on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Subscription boxes are allowed — but payment disputes over hard-to-cancel flows can cut you off.
Selling ECU tuning on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Performance tuning software that modifies engine parameters sits in a legal grey zone — and payment processors treat it as restricted.
Selling Tattoo supplies on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments declines it, but high-risk acquirers will underwrite the supplies themselves.
What every one of these has in common
Three separate layers can say no, and merchants routinely spend weeks fixing the wrong one. Shopify Payments declining you leaves your store perfectly intact and means you need a different gateway. The Shopify platform suspending you under its Acceptable Use Policy is a different decision that no gateway can solve. And a third-party gateway's acquiring bank dropping you is a third decision with its own appeal route. Read your notice for which entity is speaking.
And then there is the part that actually loses businesses
If you do need a new store, the payments problem turns out to be the easy half. This is what is sitting in your current store right now, and what happens to each piece when someone tries to move it by hand:
| What you own | How much of it | What breaks doing it by hand | What we do instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product images | 750images≈ 3 hrsbulk re-upload, ~15 sec each | By handthe CSV carries image URLs and alt text, but they point at your OLD store's CDN — so the moment the old store goes, every image 404s. Re-upload and Shopify appends a dedupe suffix to the filename, which breaks every theme section and product description that referenced the original URL | Automatedevery file re-uploaded through the API with its alt text and variant attachment intact, its content type preserved so image-restricted fields still accept it, and every reference to the old URL rewritten |
| Product descriptions | 150descriptions≈ 2 hrsone pass to repair inline image links — the CSV carries the text | By handdescriptions are full of inline images and links pointing at the old store's CDN. Paste them into the new store and the text survives perfectly while every embedded image quietly dies — which you usually discover from a customer, not from a report | Automatedbodies copied verbatim, then a second pass rewrites every source-CDN URL inside them to the re-uploaded file on the new store |
| Product attributes & variants | 450variants≈ 45 minthe CSV carries these; the time is verifying option order | By handoption ORDER is part of the product's identity. Rebuild "Size, Colour" as "Colour, Size" and every theme swatch, saved customer URL and app that keys on variant position breaks — silently, because the product page still renders | Automatedvariants upserted by SKU with option names and order preserved, so swatches, deep links and app data keep working |
| Metafields & metaobjects | 900metafields≈ 6 hrsonly the reference, JSON and metaobject fields, ~1 min each | By handthe product CSV carries simple text and number metafields — but not metaobjects, and not reference or JSON types, which is exactly where app data and theme content live. Reference fields are the real trap: copy the value and it still points at objects in the OLD store, so the page renders and the custom block is silently empty | Automatedwritten in dependency order after their targets exist, with embedded references re-pointed at the new store's objects — and any value whose reference cannot be resolved is dropped rather than written broken |
| SEO data & redirects | 252records≈ 2 hrsredirects one at a time, plus a handle audit | By handany handle that changes becomes a dead URL with no redirect, and existing 301s are not in the product CSV at all. Years of accumulated ranking and backlinks end up pointing at pages that no longer resolve — the most expensive thing on this page to get wrong, and the slowest to notice | AutomatedSEO titles, meta descriptions and handles carried across, and every existing 301 recreated, so nothing that used to rank starts 404ing |
| Your custom theme | 1theme≈ 6 hrs2–10 hrs depending on how customised it is | By handa theme is not just its files. The settings, section content and block ordering are stored against the store, so a file copy gives you the layout and none of the content. Hardcoded asset URLs and tracking snippets also still point at the old store | Automatedyour live theme pulled and pushed as-is, then scanned for tracking snippets and hardcoded URLs that need re-pointing |
| Product videos | 8videos≈ 32 minre-upload and re-attach, ~4 min each | By handthe product CSV does not carry video or 3D media, so every one is a manual re-upload. They also cannot be pulled straight from a remote URL — the bytes have to be downloaded and staged first, and a wrong content type lands the file as a generic attachment that media-restricted fields then reject | Automatedvideo bytes downloaded, staged through a proper upload target, re-attached to the right product, and verified as processed rather than silently failed |
| Customers | 5,000customers≈ 2 hrsCSV import, then cleaning up the rows that fail | By handthe importer works, but marketing consent is the exposure: the CSV carries the current opt-in state and NOT the timestamp or source behind it. Re-opting someone in is a compliance breach, dropping them burns list revenue you paid for, and you cannot prove which happened afterwards. Default-address designation is also lost | Automatedcustomers upserted by email with every address, the default-address designation, and email and SMS consent states and timestamps preserved exactly as they were |
| Order history | 12,000orders≈ 8 hrsa paid third-party importer, plus a day of mapping and reconciliation | By handShopify's own CSV importer cannot create orders at all, so the hours here assume you buy a third-party importer — key them in by hand instead and 9,400 orders is closer to 390 hours, which is why nobody does that and why order history is simply abandoned in most DIY moves. Then support cannot answer a warranty claim, repeat-purchase segments are empty, and every returning-customer flow starts from zero. Getting the mapping wrong duplicates orders or re-dates them to today, and both are worse than not importing at all | Automatedfull order history recreated through the API with line items, properties, customers re-associated, original dates and tracking numbers intact |
| Navigation menus | 3menus≈ 1 hrsabout an hour to rebuild and relink them all by hand | By handmenu items store resource IDs, not paths, so nothing about them is portable — every link has to be re-pointed at the equivalent collection, page or product on the new store | Automatedmenus rebuilt with their nesting, and every item re-pointed at the equivalent object on the new store |
| Discount codes | 25discounts≈ 1 hrsabout 1 hr via the discount CSV, or ~3 hrs rebuilt by hand | By handthe discount CSV covers basic codes, but automatic discounts, quantity breaks and combination rules are not in it and have to be reconstructed by hand. A subtly wrong rule is worse than a missing one, because nobody notices until it has been over-discounting for a fortnight | Automateddiscounts recreated through the API with their rules, usage limits and dates intact, including automatic and free-shipping types |
| Gift card balances | 40gift cardsno manual routecannot be moved by anyone | By handthis is the one thing on this page that truly cannot be moved by anyone. Gift card codes are unreadable through EVERY Shopify API, by design — no tool, ours included, can copy them. Those balances are real money you owe real customers, and abandoning the old store does not abandon the liability: the customers still turn up expecting you to honour it | Automatedwe re-issue each card with an identical balance, customer and expiry date, and hand you the new codes as a CSV with customer email copy ready to send — the only honest way to move them |
| Blogs & pages | 42articles & pages≈ 3 hrsrecreated one at a time, ~4 min each | By handno CSV route for either. Articles also have no SEO fields of their own — their title and description tags live in metafields — so a hand-rebuilt blog loses its SEO even when every word of the text is right | Automatedarticles and pages recreated with authors, tags and publish dates, their SEO written to the metafields Shopify actually stores it in, and inline image URLs rewritten |
| Apps & app data | 9apps≈ 9 hrsabout 1 hr per app to reinstall, reconfigure and re-test | By handmost app data lives in metafields on your products and customers, so reinstalling the app gets you an empty app: reviews gone, subscription plans gone, loyalty balances gone, bundles gone. Flows and automations have to be rebuilt by hand and re-tested, and anything with its own billing has to be re-subscribed | Automatedthe metafield data your apps rely on migrates with the products and customers it hangs off, so a reinstalled app finds its data waiting instead of an empty store |
Whichever category you are in, the move is the same job
Why you were declined differs by category. What has to survive the move to a store that accepts you does not: catalog, customers with their consent states, full order history, metafields, theme and every redirect.
See exactly what would move — before you spend anything
The demo scan connects read-only to your current store and counts every product, variant, image, customer, order and metafield in it, then tells you what a migration would carry across. It never writes to your store, and it works even if your storefront is already offline.
▶ Run the free demo scan