Your Bank Wasn't Built For Your Business. Vellis Is.
Vape shops, e-liquid brands and vaping distributors face account freezes, payment processing refusals and banking friction that generic providers aren't equipped to handle. Vellis provides payment processing and business banking directly - built for evolving regulatory frameworks, high-volume e-commerce and cross-border distribution.
No intermediaries. You work directly with Vellis.
A fast-growing sector caught in an ever-shifting regulatory and risk landscape.
Yet most payment processors classify vape shops as high-risk by default.
Your payment infrastructure needs to grow along with you.
An industry this large deserves stable, professional financial infrastructure.
The Real Problem
Vape shops, e-liquid brands and vape distributors operate in one of the most commercially dynamic - and most payment-unstable - sectors in retail. Here's what that costs you.
Your payment processor flags or closes your account, often without explanation.
Vape shops sit in a category most payment processors have blanket-excluded. Product classification, evolving regulatory frameworks, PACT Act obligations in the US, PMTA-related uncertainty and age-verification requirements all create automated risk flags that have nothing to do with your actual business practices. A product launch, a category expansion or a volume spike can be enough to trigger a review or a termination. Your revenue freezes while you wait for a response from a compliance team that has never looked at a vape catalogue in their lives.
Your online e-commerce and subscription models face constant friction.
Online vape sales, e-liquid subscription programmes and auto-refill hardware bundles are among the highest-margin, highest-retention models in vape e-commerce. But standard billing infrastructure was never built for the vape category. Card networks apply stricter interchange, refuse recurring billing on some MCC codes, or block transactions outright based on issuer policies. Failed renewals, card declines and manual follow-ups are eroding revenue that should be your most predictable.
Chargebacks are a constant threat, and mainstream processors respond badly.
Vape shops attract more disputes than most retail categories: age verification challenges, delivery restrictions under the PACT Act, product experience expectations and subscription cancellation confusion. Generic processors respond to chargeback spikes with account warnings and terminations, without any context for the nature of the disputes. A bad month shouldn't destroy the infrastructure your business runs on.
International expansion exposes you to a patchwork of banking and regulatory challenges.
Selling vape products across borders means navigating different flavour bans, nicotine strength limits, packaging restrictions, tax structures and - critically - payment and banking setups that have to work across all of it. Without the right infrastructure, international growth creates operational fragility, not scale.
What Vellis Provides
Direct payment processing and business banking - built and operated by Vellis for the risk profile, transaction volumes and growth ambitions of vape shops, e-liquid brands and vape distributors.
Payment processing
Stable, category-aware processing
Accept payments for vape products online and in-person, without account flags driven by product category or MCC classification.
Subscription and recurring billing
Manage e-liquid auto-refill programmes, hardware bundles and vape club memberships without manual follow-up.
Multi-currency checkout
Serve international customers in their currency with live market rates and no hidden conversion margins.
Chargeback and fraud monitoring
Calibrated to vape transaction profiles, not a generic retail risk model.
Age verification-friendly infrastructure
Built to integrate with your existing age-gating and PACT Act compliance workflows.
Business banking
Accounts built for vape revenue models
High-volume, subscription-based transactions assessed by people who understand your sector.
Multi-entity structuring
For vape groups or brands operating across several markets or legal entities.
Fast onboarding
No months-long compliance reviews that treat your established business like an unknown risk.
EMI & fintech-backed accounts
Access to Vellis-operated solutions beyond what traditional banks offer to vape businesses.
Dedicated sector expertise
Supported by people who understand vape shop and e-liquid e-commerce operations.
Pain Point to Outcome
What changes when your financial infrastructure actually fits your business.
Your current pain point
Account flagged or closed due to product category
Subscription revenue lost to failed renewals
Chargebacks threatening your account status
International customer friction and FX costs
Banking gridlock when expanding into new markets
Volume spikes triggering compliance reviews
What you get with Vellis
Volume spikes triggering compliance reviews
Recurring billing that works reliably - less manual follow-up, more revenue
Risk monitoring calibrated to your transaction profile, not blanket retail thresholds
Multi-currency checkout with live rates and no hidden conversion margins
Multi-jurisdiction account setup, fast-tracked through Vellis directly
Processing infrastructure built for vape e-commerce scale
Why Vellis
Built for high-volume, complex and internationally operating businesses - with the track record to prove it.
Companies operating directly on Vellis infrastructure.
Industries served, from regulated to high-risk.
Global
Coverage across multiple jurisdictions and currencies.
You work directly with Vellis - no intermediaries, no black boxes. From your first consultation to your live account, every step is handled by Vellis. You always know who owns your setup, who to call, and what happens next.
Our previous provider had no understanding of how private healthcare billing works. Vellis onboarded us without a single unnecessary question — and we were processing within two weeks.
Managing Director, Private Healthcare Group
Who We Work With
Vellis directly serves vape businesses at every stage of growth.
Vape e-commerce brands
Managing high volumes, subscription models and international customer bases.
Brick-and-mortar vape shops
Single-location and multi-location operators handling in-person and online sales.
E-liquid manufacturers and private label producers
Handling high-value B2B transactions and complex product catalogues.
Vape wholesale distributors
Serving retailers and B2B clients across multiple markets.
How It Works
From first conversation to live infrastructure - handled directly by Vellis, start to finish.
Tell us about your business
Share your structure, product categories, subscription model, volumes and target markets. Not a generic form - a real conversation with a Vellis specialist who understands the risk environment vape businesses operate in.
We build the right setup for you
Vellis designs a payment and banking configuration tailored to your product profile, risk classification and growth stage. A direct-to-consumer brand, a brick-and-mortar operator and a wholesale distributor have different needs - your setup reflects that.
Go live on Vellis infrastructure
Onboarding is guided by Vellis end-to-end. Once live, you operate directly on our infrastructure - with a dedicated point of contact, full visibility over your setup, and no middlemen in the chain.
Stop letting payment instability limit what your vape business can build.
The global vape market is growing at nearly 8% a year. Your payment and banking infrastructure should grow with it - not flag it. 500+ businesses already operate directly on Vellis.
FAQ
Healthcare Businesses
Yes - and this is one of the most common paths our vape clients arrive on. Many mainstream payment aggregators apply blanket exclusions to MCC 5993 (Cigar Stores and Stands) and adjacent vape codes. A shutdown from one of these providers isn't a compliance issue with your business - it's a category-level decision that Vellis doesn't apply. We onboard vape shops and e-liquid brands with proper KYC and risk review, not category-level exclusions. The only hard exclusion is placement on a MATCH list.
Each product category has its own risk profile, regulatory environment and processor treatment. Disposable vape bans in the UK and France, PMTA status for open systems in the US, nicotine pouch classification varying by jurisdiction, and CBD vape sitting at the intersection of vape and cannabis regulation all create distinct challenges. Vellis reviews your full product catalogue at onboarding and configures your setup around what you actually sell - not a generic vape template.
Yes. Vellis supports vape businesses running unified operations across in-store point-of-sale, online e-commerce and B2B wholesale channels. You get consolidated reporting, unified reconciliation and one direct point of contact - regardless of how many sales channels or store locations you operate.
Yes, provided your business operates within the legal framework of its target markets. Vellis works with vape brands navigating the UK disposable ban (June 2025), US state-level flavour restrictions, EU TPD nicotine strength caps and equivalent frameworks worldwide. What matters isn't the complexity of your regulatory environment - it's that your business operates compliantly within it.
MCC-level issuer declines aren't something any processor can override - they're set by cardholder banks, not the acquiring side. But Vellis structures your processing setup to minimise decline rates: correct MCC classification for your specific business (retail vape vs. e-liquid manufacturer vs. wholesale distributor), 3DS optimisation for card-not-present transactions, and processor routing that prioritises acquirers with higher approval rates on vape MCCs. Some issuer declines are unavoidable - but the right setup can significantly reduce your overall decline rate.
Yes, depending on your e-commerce platform's subscription engine. Vape subscription businesses face higher recurring billing failure rates than other categories because card issuers often flag repeat vape transactions. Vellis works with your platform (Shopify Subscriptions, Recharge, Bold, custom stack) to minimise involuntary churn through smart retry logic, account updater services and network tokenisation - the same tools mainstream subscription businesses use, applied to vape.
PACT Act obligations are a fulfilment and shipping issue rather than a payment one - but payment processors get nervous when they see US vape businesses that don't appear PACT-compliant, because it signals regulatory exposure that could rebound on them. Vellis onboards US vape businesses that operate under PACT Act frameworks (adult signature delivery, ATF and state registration, monthly reporting to state tax administrators). Documenting your compliance up front makes onboarding faster and reduces mid-relationship reviews.
Indirectly, yes. Because vape brands can't scale through Meta and Google, most rely heavily on affiliate programmes, influencer marketing, SMS and email. This affects customer acquisition cost, refund and return rates, and dispute patterns - all of which processors monitor. Vellis onboards knowing your acquisition channels look different from a standard e-commerce brand. We calibrate our monitoring to your actual funnel - not against benchmarks built for Meta-driven DTC.
This is a geo-routing and catalogue-configuration issue rather than a payment issue directly. Vellis supports multi-market vape brands where SKUs, formulations and product ranges vary by shipping destination. You get multi-currency checkout, jurisdictional SKU mapping via your e-commerce platform and consolidated reporting on one Vellis backend - so your customer in Paris gets EU-compliant nicotine strengths in TPD-compliant packaging while your US customer gets US SKUs, all through one payment setup.
Yes. Vellis provides business banking to vape shops and e-liquid brands that traditional banks have exited. Vellis-operated EMI and fintech-backed accounts don't apply the same blanket exclusions high-street banks do. You can hold funds, receive customer payments, pay suppliers (including international e-liquid manufacturers and hardware wholesalers in Shenzhen), and manage payroll through one unified banking setup.
Vellis multi-currency accounts let you hold balances in the currencies you actually pay suppliers in - so you convert once, at the time you choose, not every time you make a supplier payment. FX rates reflect live market conditions with no hidden margins. For high-frequency hardware sourcing from Shenzhen and Southeast Asia, this can significantly reduce the cost of traditional correspondent bank routing.
Yes. Vellis supports multi-entity, multi-jurisdiction banking setups through a unified relationship. Vape businesses often need entity separation to manage jurisdictional regulatory exposure - US PACT Act obligations sit with one entity, UK MHRA/TPD compliance with another, EU TPD with a third. Vellis structures the banking end to end with a named point of contact across all entities.
Excise tax filing itself is your accountant or tax advisor's remit, not Vellis's. But your banking setup needs to support the cash flow implications - reserved balances for excise payments, multi-state tax remittance workflows for US operators, VAT and excise duty collection at EU import. Vellis multi-currency accounts and dedicated reserve capabilities support the treasury side of vape tax compliance, so the funds are always where they need to be when filings are due.
Standard business documentation (incorporation, UBO, directors) plus vape-specific documentation depending on your market and operation: PMTA acknowledgement letters if you sell in the US, MHRA notifications if you sell in the UK, TPD notifications if you sell in the EU, a product catalogue with nicotine strength and flavour breakdown, age-verification provider documentation, and PACT Act registration if applicable. Vellis provides a complete, tailored document list upfront - no surprise requests mid-application.
It depends on your documentation readiness. Vape onboarding typically takes 5-15 business days from complete documentation submission to live processing. If your regulatory documentation (PMTA acknowledgements for the US, MHRA/TPD notifications for the UK/EU) is already in hand, we can move quickly. If you're still awaiting regulatory acknowledgements, we'd recommend starting the Vellis conversation early so we can move as soon as your documents land.
Fast, but 'fast' depends on documentation. If you're facing imminent closure, contact us immediately - we can often begin parallel onboarding while your existing account is still active, so you never experience a processing gap. Bring your current processing statements (last 3-6 months), your chargeback history, your product catalogue and any correspondence from the outgoing processor. The more we see, the faster we can move.