Is CBD legal to sell online?
Is CBD legal to sell online? Federally, yes, if it comes from hemp. The 2018 Farm Bill defined hemp by a delta-9 THC concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis and removed it from the controlled substances definition. States add their own rules, and the FDA restricts CBD in food and supplements.
Is CBD legal to sell online under federal law?
Federally, hemp is not a controlled substance. The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 defined hemp as cannabis with a delta-9 THC concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis, and removed it from the controlled substances definition. CBD derived from hemp that meets that threshold is therefore not federally scheduled. That is the starting point, not the whole answer.
The statute is public and worth reading rather than trusting anyone's summary, including ours. The act itself is Public Law 115-334, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, and the hemp definition it created sits at 7 U.S.C. 1639o. Those two links are the whole federal foundation for the CBD retail industry.
What exactly did the 2018 Farm Bill change?
It moved hemp out of drug law and into agriculture law. Hemp became a crop with a federal production framework administered by the Department of Agriculture, rather than a scheduled substance. The threshold that separates hemp from marijuana is the delta-9 THC concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis. Everything above that line stays federally controlled.
The production side now runs through the Department of Agriculture, which publishes its hemp program at USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. That is where growing, sampling and testing rules live. It matters to retailers because the paperwork your supplier holds is the paperwork a bank will eventually want to see attached to your file.
What is the FDA position on CBD in food and supplements?
The FDA has stated that CBD may not be lawfully added to food or marketed as a dietary supplement under the current framework, and it has said a new regulatory pathway is needed. That position is separate from whether hemp is a controlled substance. A product can sit outside drug law and still be marketed in a way the FDA treats as unlawful.
The agency sets out its position on cannabis and cannabis-derived products, including cannabidiol, at fda.gov. For an online store the practical consequence is about your copy. Health claims, condition claims and anything that reads as treating a disease are the fastest route to both a regulatory letter and a declined application. We cover why on what makes CBD high risk.
Do state rules change the answer where I sell?
Yes, and this is where most sellers get caught. States regulate hemp products under their own laws, and they differ on which product forms are allowed, what testing and labeling is required, what age limits apply and how intoxicating hemp derivatives are treated. We do not publish a state-by-state table we cannot keep accurate. Check your state agriculture or health department directly.
We are deliberately not listing state rules here. A stale table on a payments site is worse than no table, because someone builds a shipping policy on it. What we will say is what to check: whether your product form is permitted, what testing and labeling your state requires, what minimum age applies to sales, and how your state treats intoxicating hemp derivatives. Your state agriculture department and state health department publish those answers, and a lawyer in your state can confirm them for your specific product line.
Shipping makes this sharper than it looks. An online store sells into every state it accepts an order from, so the strictest state you ship to sets your real operating limit. Build the answer before you build the checkout, and wire age verification to match.
What does legality have to do with getting a merchant account?
Legality gets you in the door. It does not get you approved. A bank underwrites the whole file: what you sell, how you describe it, your lab documentation, your refund policy and your chargeback history. Sellers with a perfectly legal product get declined regularly for how the website makes claims, not for the product itself.
Aggregators skip the underwriting entirely and exclude the category instead, which is why sellers keep getting shut off by platforms they never spoke to. That mechanic is explained on why PayPal bans CBD, and the alternative is on high risk processing.
What should an online CBD store have in place before applying?
Have current certificates of analysis from an accredited lab for the products you sell, labeling that matches the contents, a refund policy a customer can actually find, clear age gating, and marketing copy that avoids disease and treatment claims. That package answers most of what underwriting is going to ask before it asks.
With that in hand, the account itself is straightforward. Finished consumer goods usually route through a CBD merchant account, while flower, biomass and wholesale supply sit better on a hemp merchant account. The checkout connects through a CBD payment gateway, so your customer's experience does not change.
Get the payment side right from the start
Tell us what you sell and which states you ship to. A Rooted Payments specialist walks you through what a sponsor bank needs to see.