By Timothy S. Donahue

Top Takeaways:

• Payment access, not demand, is the bottleneck: Nicotine pouch sellers are losing access to card processing because major platforms label the category as “high risk,” even for compliant businesses.
• Tower targets a specific gap: The new gateway is built for nicotine pouches, with category-specific underwriting and support for Visa/Mastercard registration.
• Stability over surprise: The service is positioned to prevent sudden account closures and frozen funds amid rising regulatory and card-network scrutiny.

For many nicotine pouch retailers, the problem hasn’t been demand — it’s been getting paid.

Tower Payments said it has launched a dedicated payment gateway and merchant account service aimed specifically at nicotine pouch e-commerce businesses that have lost credit card processing because they were declined or terminated by mainstream providers.

According to the company, major payment processors and financial institutions — including Stripe, Square, PayPal, and traditional banks — routinely classify nicotine pouches as “high risk” under acceptable-use policies. That classification has led to sudden account closures, frozen funds, and interrupted cash flow, even for merchants operating lawfully and in compliance with age-verification and marketing rules.

Tower Payments said its new offering is designed to restore stable Visa and Mastercard acceptance by using underwriting teams familiar with both tobacco-derived and synthetic nicotine products, rather than imposing blanket prohibitions.

The service includes dedicated merchant accounts paired with a payment gateway that integrates with popular e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and ClickFunnels, allowing retailers to maintain existing checkout flows without redesigning their storefronts.

Tower said it also helps merchants with required card-network registrations, an increasingly important step as Visa and Mastercard tighten oversight of nicotine and adult-use categories. The company said those registrations are often a barrier for pouch sellers navigating payment compliance on their own.

Beyond basic processing, the platform includes fraud-prevention tools, recurring billing and subscription support, and PCI DSS compliance. Pricing is disclosed upfront, Tower said, with no reserve requirements or hidden fees — an issue that has frustrated merchants whose funds were previously held without warning.

Founder Nyah Penney said the company’s approach centers on prescreening and direct support rather than reactive enforcement after an account goes live.

“Our focus is on doing the work before a merchant starts processing,” Penney said. “That means understanding the product, the supply chain, the marketing, and the compliance posture, so merchants aren’t blindsided later by frozen deposits or sudden shutdowns.”

The launch comes amid continued expansion of nicotine pouch sales across the U.S. and international markets, even as regulatory scrutiny internationally intensifies. While many pouch products remain legal to sell online, payment access has emerged as a choke point, with processors often treating all nicotine products as interchangeable with higher-risk vaping or unregulated product categories.

Industry participants say the mismatch between lawful retail status and access to financial services has become one of the most persistent operational challenges for pouch brands, particularly smaller and direct-to-consumer sellers.