Standard payment processors (including WooCommerce Payments) typically decline to process transactions involving CBD and THC products due to regulatory and risk concerns. Square is a known-working alternative that accepts these product categories. The recommended architecture uses WooCommerce for product catalog management and Square exclusively for payment processing.
CBD and THC products are considered high-risk by most payment processors. Attempting to use WooCommerce's native payment gateway — or most third-party processors — will result in account termination or transaction declines. This is a known industry constraint, not a configuration issue.
"We tried to do WooCommerce and we had all of our products set up in there, but we can't do WooCommerce payments." — Caitlin Doak, Fieldwell CBD
| Layer | Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Product catalog | WooCommerce | Product listings, variants, inventory, attributes |
| Payment processing | Square | Checkout, transactions, payment data |
WooCommerce remains the right tool for managing products — it handles variants (potency, size, flavor), filtering, related products, and the overall store structure. Square replaces WooCommerce Payments at the checkout step only.
This pattern was confirmed and implemented for [2] during the October 2025 website design review. The client (Caitlin Doak) noted Square as the established solution from prior experience with their existing Fieldwell CBD site.