Payment processors for the CBD industry recently notified all of their e-commerce customers who sell cannabidiol that they will no longer be able to process Visa Payments.

As of this morning, May 15, many CBD business had yet another obstacle thrown in their path when they were notified that they could no longer accept Visa payments on their sites. Some companies received less than 8 hours of notice before these changes took place and others were forced to stop accepting Visa payments weeks ago.

This is especially distressing when taking into consideration the fact that CBD businesses have had a notoriously difficult time maintaining regular access to banking and payment processing services. What’s more, Visa is the largest credit card issuer in the world with 323 million cardholders, many of which will have to find another CC to purchase their CBD products.

According to one business owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, “99% of all CBD companies will no longer be accepting credit cards. Currently, 70% of our sales come from Visa so this is a major burden and will impact your conversions. Please hold off on campaigns until you receive notification that all cards are being accepted. Our hope is to have this resolved before it becomes an issue or within a short time frame.”

While most companies are taking the hit, for others it’s business as usual… with a few modifications. There are a few retailers out there who, for some reason, are still able to accept Visa payments on their sites. Other companies are sending separate invoices via private email to process Visa payments.

Either way, we too can only hope that this goes back to normal very soon. With expected passage of the SAFE banking act, and PayPal’s newfound openness to the industry, ideally, CBD merchants won’t have to deal with this breed of financial uncertainty for much longer.

Please note that this is only impacting online businesses at the moment. It’s undetermined if or when brick and mortar stores will be affected.