Having the exact same problem myself. I am a TINY startup selling literally only concrete and bamboo boxes. Their risk team opted to ban payment processing because what I’m selling is allegedly a smoking accessory.
9 emails later, all of which have yielded to an identical flippant response every single time, has led me down the path of choosing either:
a) a more expensive plan and paying more in transaction fees for being forced to use a ‘high risk’ payment processor… who has higher credit card rates themselves;
b) an even more expensive plan with neutral transaction fees but still more expensive third party high risk credit card rates, or;
c) same plan, everything is now 3% net more expensive to sell on Shopify.
I’m honestly at a loss to understand the decision-making process here, and the inherent lack of an appeals process or a pane of transparency to understand the reason for such an unfortunate decision.
But Shopify knows its backend is arguably the easiest to use, so they know you’ll come crawling back.
I have so many friends who WORK at Shopify and extol the virtue of its work culture, but I couldn’t be more disappointed in how quick to dismiss the little guys like myself that they turned out to be.
? 