Today’s leading CBD brands are struggling to establish good banking relationships. While some CBD companies accept credit and debit card payments, others do not.
We’re explaining some of the challenges facing the CBD industry – including the solutions today’s market leaders are implementing.
Why is It Hard for CBD Companies to Bank?
With most online retailers, the online shopping process is simple: you input your credit card information, and then a package arrives on your doorstep a few days later.
The CBD industry, however, has never been that straightforward. Sometimes, customers will purchase a CBD oil only to have the purchase denied by their bank. The bank might reject a payment because it comes from a shady international payment processor.
Or, several major merchant payment processors have come out and specifically said that they would refuse to process payments for cannabidiol companies.
These issues have led to a confusing web of banking restrictions for CBD companies. So what’s the problem? What’s the solution for CBD consumers and merchants?
Finding Banks is Easy, But Finding Merchant Payment Processors is Hard
First, as pointed out by Sonja Soderlund at CBD Hacker, it’s a giant myth that hemp and cannabis companies are unbanked. There’s a prevailing myth that the industry’s largest companies are just sitting around with enormous piles of cash hidden inside walls or mattresses.
In reality, most hemp and cannabis companies have transparent banking relationships. It’s relatively easy to find a bank willing to manage your money and setup a business account.
However, the hard part is finding a payment processor willing to process merchant payments for hemp, cannabis, and CBD companies.
Specifically, companies struggle to find domestic payment processors, which forces them to rely on costly international payment processors instead.
Without a merchant payment processor, it’s difficult for a CBD business to accept credit or debit cards. Merchant payment processors are the middlemen between a company and its customers’ conventional payment methods.
The merchant payment processor is responsible for accepting the customer’s information, then encrypting and sending that information to the credit card company for authorization. The payment processor then handles the entire payment transaction, deducting a fee, then depositing the customer’s money into the business’s merchant account.
When a CBD company does not have a merchant payment processor, it typically means that customers cannot make debit or credit card purchases using the CBD company’s website. Obviously, that’s a problem.
If CBD is Legal Nationwide, Then Why Is It Hard for CBD Companies to Find a Payment Processor?
CBD is federally legal. The 2018 Farm Bill clarified the legal status of hemp and CBD, theoretically making it easier for CBD companies nationwide to do business.
After the 2018 Farm Bill was passed, it looked like merchant payment processing would be more accessible for the CBD industry than ever before. Elavon, a major domestic merchant processor and US Bank subsidiary, announced it would start providing payment processing services to the CBD industry.
Elavon garnered significant attention across the CBD space. Merchants jumped on board, excited to have found a stable and convenient payment processor.
Then, Elavon bailed: in April, just a few weeks after launching its service, Elavon announced that its CBD clients had 45 days to find alternative payment processors.
Clearly, Elavon encountered a problem that scared it away from the CBD industry. Elavon was dominating the space and making tons of money: they wouldn’t have just abandoned this revenue stream unless they saw something that worried them.
So why are Elavon and other merchant payment processors worried about the CBD space?
CBD is a Legal Industry – But It’s Still a High-Risk Industry
CBD may be federally legal, but it’s also a highly-regulated industry. Like any industry with extensive regulations, there are significant regulatory hurdles and costs facing all participants in the industry.
There are extensive rules governing the production and sale of CBD. There are rules governing how much THC can be found within a strain of hemp before it’s declared cannabis and becomes federally illegal.
CBD producers need to follow all of these rules and regulations. If they don’t, then their product can quickly become federally illegal.
Merchant payment processors need to not only follow these rules as well, but they also need to ensure their clients are following these rules. If a single client in a merchant payment processor’s network violates any of these rules, then the merchant payment processor could face significant liability.
Making things even more complicated is that the regulatory framework around CBD has not even been clarified as of yet. The regulations are changing and unclear. It’s creating a frightening, toxic trap for CBD companies.
Payment Processors Worry About Chargebacks Due to Shady CBD Supplements
There’s another issue scaring merchant payment processors away from the CBD industry. CBD has already become closely intertwined with the world of nutritional supplements.
There are plenty of valid nutritional supplement producers on the market today. There are also shady supplement producers who package their products with low doses of low-quality CBD, automatic auto-ship programs, fake free trials, and other issues.
The supplement industry has long been plagued by chargebacks. A customer might order a free trial of a diet pill from a website. The website requires a credit card to cover the costs of shipping. The customer pays just $4.95 today. Hidden in the terms and conditions, however, are terms that allow the customer’s credit card to be automatically charged $89.95 within 14 days if the ‘free trial’ bottle is not returned. Seeing the charge on his credit card statement, the customer might contact Visa and claim they did not order the product, and that it’s an illegal charge.
Chargebacks like this occur daily in the supplement space. CBD supplements are trendy and have become wrapped up in this space – just like garcinia cambogia supplements and thermogenic diet pills of the past.
Any time a business has a high number of chargebacks, that business will struggle to find a merchant payment processor. Many supplement manufacturers struggle for this reason, and that’s part of the reason why CBD makers are struggling as well.
CBD Companies Rely on Costly International Payment Processors
CBD companies struggle to find domestic merchant payment processors for all of the reasons listed above.
And yet many CBD companies continue to accept credit card and debit card payments. So how are they doing it?
The secret is simple: CBD companies rely on high-priced international payment processors. These payment processors may be less bound by US laws – but they also charge higher fees than a domestic payment processor would.
These higher fees inevitably get passed onto customers. Customers are paying higher prices because domestic merchant payment processors don’t want to touch the industry.
This is also the reason why your CBD oil payment will occasionally get rejected, even when ordering from a reputable US-based provider. The provider is forced to rely on a shady overseas payment processor, and your bank sees this as a suspicious transaction and blocks it.
Final Word: CBD Customers Pay Higher Prices
All of this boils down to one simple conclusion:
CBD is not an illegal industry for payment processors, but it is a high-risk industry.
Merchant payment processors are staying away from CBD due to unclear regulations, the fear of chargebacks, and the difficulty of making sure clients play by the (ever-changing) rules.
Until these issues are resolved, customers will continue to pay the price as CBD companies resort to costly international payment processors.
As per the latest study by Persistence Market Research (PMR), the global weight loss dietary supplements market is anticipated to witness healthy growth. The market is likely to register 6.0% CAGR throughout the forecast period 2017-2026. The global weight loss dietary supplements market is also estimated to bring in US$ 37,177.6 million revenue by 2026 end.
With obesity becoming a global health concern, weight loss continues to be one of the most focused areas. Hence, increasing number of companies are coming up with the new products in weight loss supplements. The increasing consumption and demand for weight loss dietary supplements, regulations on the production of these supplements along with ingredients used are also gaining traction in various countries. The government in various countries are also focusing on the quality and quantity of ingredients used and if any of these ingredients can have severe side-effects, affecting the health of the consumers negatively.
Increasing use of Natural and Organic Ingredients in the Weight Loss Dietary Supplements
The negative effects of being obese and overweight are resulting in the increasing use of weight management products. Consumers are also adopting weight loss supplements in forms of pill, liquid, and powder. Hence, with the increase in the use of these supplements, manufacturers are also trying to produce safer products, thereby using organic and natural ingredients and plant-based ingredients. Among various ingredients, green tea extract is considered as one of the most popular and safest ingredients in the weight loss dietary supplements. Similarly, Garcinia cambogia is also being considered as an ingredient in the weight loss supplements. However, these ingredients have been reported to have adverse effects like a headache, constipation, UTI. Hence, there has been an increase in the investment in the research on other organic ingredients that can be used to produce weight loss supplements.
Global Weight Loss Dietary Supplements Market: Segmental Insights
The global weight loss dietary supplements market includes various segments such as end-user, form, ingredients, distribution channel, and region. Based on the form, the market is categorized into powder, liquid, and soft gell/pills. Soft gell/pills are expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. By the end of 2026, soft gell/pills are expected to exceed US$ 18,500 million revenue.
Based on the end-user, the segment consists of men, women and senior citizen. Among these, women are expected to be the largest users of weight loss dietary supplements. Women segment as the end-user is estimated to create an incremental opportunity of more than US$ 7,900 million between 2017 and 2026.
By Distribution Channel, pharmacies drug store is expected to emerge as the largest distribution channel for the weight loss dietary supplements. Pharmacies drug store is estimated to account for more than one-third of the revenue share by the end of 2017.
Based on the ingredients, the segment consists of amino acids, vitamins minerals, botanical supplements, and others. Vitamins minerals are expected to emerge as one of the largest used ingredients in the weight loss dietary supplements. By the end of 2026, vitamins minerals are estimated to exceed US$ 16,900 million revenue.
Region-wise, the market is categorized into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Latin America, Japan, and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among the given regions, North America is expected to dominate the global weight loss dietary supplements market throughout the forecast period 2017-2026.
Global Weight Loss Dietary Supplements Market: Competitive Assessment
Key players in the global weight loss dietary supplements market are Amway (Nutrilite), Abott Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, Glanbia, Herbalife International, Pfizer, American Health, Stepan, Nature’s Sunshine Products, and FANCL.
Fake reviews are increasingly prevalent across many top retailer websites, according to a study from Fakespot, which analyzes online customer reviews for fake or unreliable reviews.
52 percent of reviews posted on Walmart.com are “inauthentic and unreliable,” Fakespot estimates
30 percent of Amazon reviews are fake or unreliable, the study found
About a third of reviews on makeup retailer Sephora and video-game service Steam are also unreliable or fake, the analysis discovered
“My advice is to be very skeptical” when reading online reviews, said Saoud Khalifah, CEO of Fakespot
The fake reviews threaten to undermine the credibility of retailers struggling with the influx, according to Fakespot, which uses algorithms to look for patterns of deception in reviews. Manufacturers are eager to earn 5-star reviews that can push their products to the top of a search result on Amazon, for instance, with some turning to trickery to make their products stand out.
“You need a lot of good positive reviews to convince people to check out their products,” said Khalifah, who wrote a software program to detect fake reviews after getting tricked himself by glowing reviews for a sleep supplement. After the supplement didn’t work, he realized many of those positive reviews were fake.
Khalifah said his research “tells me that 1 in 3 reviews on any of these platform is highly unreliable. They have been influenced by people at the company [making or marketing the product that’s sold on the website] or written by people hired by the company. There is a lot of bias in the reviews.”
For instance, companies will send postcards to people who recently purchased a product on Amazon, promising them a gift card to the site if they write a 5-star review that gets published. Other companies hire professional reviewers to post glowing reviews, while some use bots to post fake reviews en masse.
In the case of the postcards offering gift cards in exchange for top reviews, Fakespot’s Khalifah says the customer reviews are still problematic. In some cases, the offers are only valid if the review is posted within a few days of the purchase, but that may not give a consumer enough time to test the product and figure out of it performs as advertised.
“These influenced reviews are degrading the quality of your online shopping experience,” he says.
Legal action
In a statement sent to CBS MoneyWatch, Walmart said it recognizes that reviews are “an important part of the Walmart shopping experience.” It added that it moderates all reviews. “If we do not believe a review is from an actual customer, we immediately remove it from our site,” the company said.
Amazon said it invests “significant resources” in maintaining the quality of its reviews. “Even one inauthentic review is one too many,” the company said in a statement sent to CBS MoneyWatch.
It noted it has posted participation guidelines for reviewers and companies that sell on its site, and it added that it suspends, bans and takes legal action against those who violate its policies.
Amazon said it uses a combination of investigators and automation to root out inauthentic reviews. “We estimate more than 90 percent of inauthentic reviews are computer generated, and we use machine learning technology to analyze all incoming and existing reviews 24/7 and block or remove inauthentic reviews,” the company said.
Sephora and Steam’s parent company, Valve, didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
How to detect fake reviews
Fake reviews started proliferating several years ago, but show no sign of letting up, Khalifah says. While they may seem like a nuisance, they have the potential to mislead consumers about the quality of products. And consumers tend to rely on those reviews for purchasing advice, with about 84 percent of consumers saying they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, Fakespot said.
Consumers can plug in the URL of a product into Fakespot’s website, which grades the reviews from A to F and provides insights into whether a retailer has removed reviews, a sign that some of the reviews may have been fake or biased. One popular external battery on Amazon, for instance, earned a “D” rating from Fakespot, which determined that fewer than 44 percent of the reviews were reliable.
Consumers can also eyeball reviews on their own for signs of deception. Khalifah says red flags include:
A one-day surge in five-star reviews
Broken grammar
Reviews from reviewers who post hundreds of reviews in one day
It’s not only that companies are faking glowing reviews, but companies are hiring people or using bots to also post fake “bad” reviews for competitors. A sudden rash of 1-star reviews for a product could be a sign of sabotage, for instance.
“We believe the review system is broken,” Khalifah said. “People still don’t realize how much the review system is gamed.”
The Federal Trade Commission is watching, too. On Tuesday it announced its first case against a marketer’s use of phony paid reviews on an independent retail website. Cure Encapsulations Inc. settled FTC allegations it made false and unsubstantiated claims for its garcinia cambogia weight-loss supplement through a third-party website the agency said was paid to write and post fake reviews on Amazon.com.
“When a company buys fake reviews to inflate its Amazon ratings, it hurts both shoppers and companies that play by the rules,” Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
The above discussion should give you some ideas about hard fitness magazine. Compare not only their prices but also their performance.
List of Top best hard fitness magazine in 2019
Here is a short list of the top hard fitness magazineproducts from each of the price ranges. Don’t think that cheap means poorly made, often the difference in the products by price are in what features they include not the quality of their manufacture.
That’s why we’ve decided to do an in-depth research around these hard fitness magazine. Now, at the end of those hours-long using sessions and analysis, we are all set to recommend the best choices you’ll have in the hard fitness magazine category. Obviously, we have our picks from premium, semi-premium and budget-friendly sectors. Therefore, when it’s time, you can have the best hard fitness magazine .
Premium Segment
The premium segment includes products that are priced above a certain range. The quality of these and feature capabilities can make these hard fitness magazine deal for professional use.
Medium Segment
The medium segment of the hard fitness magazine market has a mid price range which fits those looking for best bang of their buck.. This is a very wide price range to find products with such similar features but what differentiates them from each other is the approach they take to their features. These are higher end consumer products, but not the pro-summer quality of the premium segment.
When purchasing a Product you want to make sure that you purchase the best hard fitness magazine available for the man/woman who will be on the receiving end. One of the ways to accomplish this is by comparing the different brands that are available and getting the features that fit within your budget.
There are other features that differ by brand also. For example some models will give you a choice of motor speeds. They will give you the option of two different speeds to choose from and other models will just have a standard non-adjustable speed. Having the option can come in handy especially for men that maintain a close cut.
Why do you need a hard fitness magazine
A hard fitness magazine is one of the most popular item that is going to be viral in coming years, due to its wide range of applicability in the industry. People may or may not be aware of the reason why people should buy a hard fitness magazine or why they need to have one.
How to choose the best hard fitness magazine for you?
To choose and buy the right kind of hard fitness magazine , you will have to be very careful in doing so. Because the hard fitness magazine come in a wide range of types, having different characteristics and capabilities and if you don’t concentrate on each and every aspect, then you surely would miss out the best one for you.
Here is a checklist you can use to double check your choice while selecting and purchasing it.
Determine the type and function you need
You should be very clear about the type of hard fitness magazine you need. Keep in mind the various types and determine the best on the basis of the feature you need and the purpose you need to accomplish. Like for a medium range product with a medium quality or a high end stuff.
Brand and price
If you have a particular budget or a specific brand in mind then do sort out the brand first and then look for further features.
Quality of the material
The first thing you should look at, is the quality of material and the sturdiness of the structure. It is important because the hard fitness magazine should be made of high quality and durable material to help it withstand normal day to day wear and tear.
Warranty and complimentary tools
If you can get a warranty from the manufacturer then it would be a plus, so look at this feature also. In addition to it you may also find some tool that some of the manufacturers offer, along your product.
Where to buy the best hard fitness magazine
Buying a hard fitness magazine could be hectic, if you don’t know where you can find the best brands and a wide range hard fitness magazine types to let you select the one you need. For this, you’ll have to search for the most trustworthy and reliable seller that will offer you all the best rated brands along with the best price available on the market. You can either look to buy it from a local market or through online retailer and stores like Amazon.
Most of the people have a tendency to prefer online stores like The amazon. The reason behind it is the availability of the wide range of quality products, trustworthy sellers and an opportunity to compare the products and pick the best one for you.
So, You can easily buy your hard fitness magazine on amazon at affordable rates and an assurance of a quality product.
The final word
This is just an overview of some of the best hard fitness magazine in each of the price ranges. The point is that no matter what your budget, there is a functional hard fitness magazine for you. Make sure you filter them for the ones that interest you so you know all the features and considerations of each. That can be the best way to identify what features you really need in a more expensive version.
You should always speak with your health care provider anytime you want to try a dietary supplement, regardless of its popularity. Anyone sensitive to caffeine should use caution when choosing a Plexus supplement, as many of them contain the stimulant. Also, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, those with bleeding disorders, anxiety, glaucoma, high blood pressure or irritable bowel syndrome should not consume green coffee, as it can worsen these conditions. Green coffee may also elevate homocysteine levels, which is associated with heart disease, so use caution if you have a heart condition.
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