Selling cigars on Shift4Shop using a high-risk payment gateway –

Selling cigars and tobacco products on Shift4Shop, one of the longest running and most popular shopping cart software’s available today, is a relatively simple process. As that market is categorized as “high-risk,” (mostly pertaining to a higher rate of chargebacks in that market and regulatory risks) cigar and tobacco shops must open a proper, high-risk merchant account for their cigar site and get a credit card processing gateway setup correctly.

High-risk payment processing on Shift4Shop

The reason one needs a high-risk merchant account is due to underwriting for online merchant accounts. For most “low-risk” e-commerce merchants getting a payment processor and merchant account is as simple as signing up for a service like Paypal or Stripe.

The unfortunate truth is the underwriting for those accounts strictly forbids many “high-risk” e-commerce activities, and they don’t usually finish the underwriting or check on new accounts until a few months after they’ve opened. Meaning if you had started selling cigars on a common payment gateway it’s likely they would freeze or close your account as soon as they discover what you’re selling. This not only stops your business in its tracks but also can severely complicate issues for the business owner.

This is why we go out of our way to set up payment gateways and recommend “high-risk” merchant account providers that suit specific businesses. Not only do we match you with an account that serves your market but we will help guide you through the setup process of your payment gateway as well. We do this at no direct cost to you, the business owner, as we receive an incentive from the service providers.

Fortunately, Shift4Shop uses all three of our favorite payment processors for high-risk merchants; NMI, Authorize.Net, and eProcessing Network. Different payment gateways have distinct advantages, for example, NMI has a great feature that allows you to run multiple accounts from one interface online. Instead of logging into each store’s backend, you can see all your transaction information from one easy to use gateway account. This can come in handy if you are selling multiple high-risk products and, for marketing or processor reasons, don’t want to list them all on the same web-store.

Shift4Shop advantages for cigars and tobacco sales

One thing that can be a hassle in the online cigar market is making sure you are charging the appropriate amount for taxes. Each state has different regulations and taxes on the sale of tobacco and alcohol; fortunately, Shift4Shop makes this easy with their simple tax setup. It allows you to set the tax charging options ranging from location to product type and even customer-based rules.

Collecting taxes has never been easier with Shift4Shop. Shift4Shop also has product variety features that will help you create products that your customers will enjoy, for example, many cigar smokers like to buy in 3 or 5 packs that have a variety of flavors for them to enjoy. With Shift4Shop you can make choosing these packs quick and straightforward, giving you an excellent boost for returning customers.

In addition, we recommend switching these varieties up from time to time, swapping out low sellers for new combo’s to keep sales from dipping after customers have tried all the variations and chosen a few favorites. Shift4Shop also has great drop shipping options for business owners who use national distributors. If you have a distributor and they have an online product inventory you can plug that into your site, saving you time on setting up products and earning you money on products you don’t need to store physically. Learn more about how to integrate a drop shipper into your Shift4Shop store.

Another great feature from Shift4Shop is their theme bank, which even contains a free cigar site theme. There are also many themes out there from third-party developers you can use, or if you have the time on your hands, you can even make your own theme and upload it to Shift4Shop.

Cigar payment gateways: we can help

If you are new to the e-commerce or high-risk e-commerce scene make sure you do your research and find out what restrictions and conditions exist for cigar and tobacco sales. You can learn a lot from our cigar page, which details much important information pertaining to payment gateways and your requirements and responsibilities as a business owner in this high-risk market.

If you have any questions or if you’re ready to get the ball rolling with a payment gateway or merchant account recommendation use the contact form below.