Some shutdowns are the correct outcome.
Most Shopify Payments terminations are an underwriting mismatch: a legal business in a category a payment processor chose not to serve. Some are not. For these, no gateway, no new merchant account and no new company fixes anything — and anyone selling you one of those as the solution is selling you fraud.
We do not build recovery pages for these
Counterfeits, replicas and "1:1" designer goods
Intellectual-property crime. A processor that boards you is a processor that has been lied to, and it earns a MATCH listing for illegal transactions.
IPTV subscriptions and jailbroken streaming boxes
Criminal copyright infringement in most jurisdictions, regardless of how the listing is worded.
Novelty IDs and fake documents
A federal offence in the US and named explicitly on every processor prohibited list.
Essay mills and contract cheating
Illegal in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and treated as fraud-adjacent everywhere else.
Penny auctions
A recognised consumer-fraud model. No amount of compliance work makes the mechanism honest.
MLM and business opportunities paying on recruitment
A pyramid under the FTC's own doctrine, and a prohibited deceptive practice for every major processor.
Prescription medicines without a prescription
Illegal, actively enforced by the FDA, and dangerous. Licensed telehealth is a legitimate business; this is not it.
SARMs and research chemicals sold for human consumption
Legal to sell for laboratory research, illegal to sell for people to take. Marketing that winks at human use is the offence, and it is enforced.
Free-trial and negative-option billing that bills until you cancel
The single largest source of chargeback-driven terminations, prohibited outright by processors, and now squarely inside the FTC's Negative Option Rule.
Nor do we help with any of this
- Concealing a MATCH listing — nominee or straw owners, a spouse's tax ID, or anything else designed to make a listed principal invisible to underwriting.
- Misdescribing your products or your MCC to pass a review. Lying on a merchant application is itself the offence, whatever you are selling.
- Running one business's sales through another business's merchant account. That is transaction laundering. It has its own MATCH reason code and it has been prosecuted.
- MID stacking — spreading volume across multiple accounts to keep each one's chargeback ratio under a monitoring threshold.
- "Clean" or aged merchant accounts with borrowed processing history. There is no legitimate version of this product.
What we do help with
The large, dull middle: legal businesses in categories that payment processors price as risky. Supplements, hemp and CBD, vapes, adult products, firearms accessories, bullion — all legal to sell, all routinely declined by Shopify Payments, all served by an entire high-risk acquiring industry that exists for exactly this. The route is to fix the root cause, apply honestly to someone who underwrites your category, and move your store without losing the catalog, the customers, the order history or the rankings on the way.
Selling CBD & hemp on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments will not touch it — but Shopify itself documents the way to sell it.
Selling Alcohol on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Stripe restricts alcohol in the US; three-tier law and shipping compliance are what block you.
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 Firearms accessories on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Accessories are borderline legal to sell—but magazines and parts trigger blanket declines.
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 Vapes & e-liquid on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Stripe restricts it outright—you need an acquirer who specialises in tobacco compliance.
Selling Adult toys on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments declines by default, but acquirers do underwrite the physical products themselves.
Selling Ammunition on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Ammunition sales are restricted on Shopify Payments and require a specialist processor.
Selling Bullion & precious metals on Shopify: Payments, Reserves &…
High-value sales and fraud risk mean acquirers lock precious metals behind stricter reserves and case-by-case underwriting.
Selling Firearms on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments declines it outright—but FFL dealers can process through specialists who underwrite firearms retail.
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 Gift cards & stored value on Shopify: Payments, Reserves &…
Gift card sales are restricted on Shopify Payments due to fraud and chargeback risk.
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 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 Nicotine pouches on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Nicotine pouches are restricted on Shopify Payments—most acquirers need age-gating proof and subscription controls.
Selling Nootropics on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Cognitive-enhancer claims and research-chemical status make Stripe decline most nootropics merchants outright.
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 Weight loss on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Subscription weight loss products face the highest chargeback rates in nutra — and Shopify Payments knows it.
Selling Airsoft & airguns on Shopify: Payments, Reserves & Recovery
Shopify Payments declines replica firearms by appearance—even if they are legal where you sell.
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 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 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.
Legal category, wrong underwriting? Move it, from $247
If you are in one of the categories above, nothing here helps you. If you are not — if you sell something legal that a payment processor simply priced as risky — this is the part we do.
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