Square is starting to process payments from CBD companies

CBD seems to be everywhere lately, appearing as an ingredient in everything from dog treatments to fast food burgers. However, at least one payment processing service hadn’t caught up to the trend — until now.

The financial services company Square has started a pilot program to accept payments for select CBD products, according to Forbes. A Square spokesperson called it an “invite-only beta” in a statement to Mashable, but didn’t provide specifics beyond that. 

Square’s support website specifically calls out marijuana and “related products” as things it won’t sell because they are not legal at the federal level, which should explain its previous hesitance to process CBD sales. 

But the CBD floodgates have opened in recent years, especially with the legalization of hemp in a bill that President Donald Trump signed — in a very Trumpian way — last year. For those not in the know yet, CBD is one of the many compounds that can be extracted from cannabis. The most well-known other cannabis component is THC.

In layman’s terms, THC is the part that gets you high while CBD doesn’t necessarily do that. CBD-infused products tend to advertise themselves as able to help with anxiety or pain relief without the psychoactive aspects of using weed. Actual research into CBD’s benefits is still limited at the moment, though.

It can be found in all sorts of forms, from pills and gummies to skin cream and coffee. The legality of some kinds of CBD is still a bit murky, thanks to the generally fluid state of marijuana legalization in the United States, but CBD extracted from hemp seems to be in the clear.

The FDA even approved it as an epilepsy treatment last year.

It’s unclear based on Square’s statement exactly which CBD payments can be made through its service, or how the company plans to work with cannabis companies going forward. An “invite-only beta” is not a total reversal of the company’s previous stance regarding CBD, which was to totally disallow sales on its platform.

That said, companies that like making money should probably at least look into hopping on the CBD bandwagon in the near future.