Nicotine Pouch Merchant Accounts Start With the FDA List

Nicotine pouches have become a regular line for smoke shops and online tobacco stores, and the rules around them have changed quickly. The FDA authorized its first pouches in January 2025. By the end of October 2026 it had authorized 67. Over the same period it sent warning letters to online sellers, California started enforcing a list of approved products, and Washington extended its tobacco products tax to pouches made with synthetic nicotine.

For a merchant, the effect is that an underwriter reviewing a pouch store looks at the catalog before anything else. This guide explains what federal and state rules say, how Visa classifies tobacco sellers, and what an acquirer will want to see before it approves an account. Card network rules are cited from the Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules of 24 October 2026 and the Visa Merchant Data Standards Manual of October 2026.

Pouches are tobacco products under federal law

A nicotine pouch contains no tobacco leaf. That does not take it outside FDA regulation. Pouches made with nicotine extracted from tobacco were already tobacco products, and a federal law that took effect on April 14, 2022 extended FDA authority to nicotine from any source, including synthetic nicotine. A manufacturer of a non-tobacco nicotine product must submit a premarket application and receive FDA authorization before marketing it.

The federal minimum age applies as well. Since legislation signed on December 20, 2019, it is illegal for a retailer to sell any tobacco product to anyone under 21.

Most pouches on the market are not authorized

A new tobacco product needs a marketing granted order from the FDA before it can be legally sold. The FDA issued the first orders for nicotine pouches on January 16, 2025, covering 20 ZYN products: ten flavors, each in 3 mg and 6 mg strengths. It added 11 ZYN ULTRA products on August 21, 2026, and on October 30, 2026 it authorized 24 Velo pouches, all at 4 mg, reviewed under its nicotine pouch pilot program. In that announcement the FDA said it had authorized 67 nicotine pouches to date.

Authorization covers specific products, not brands. A flavor or strength the FDA has not authorized is unauthorized even when the tin carries the name of a brand that has authorized products. In an April 2026 warning letter to a U.S. online retailer, the FDA cited ZYN Cool Blueberry and ZYN Red Fruits 9 mg as products lacking a marketing authorization order. It said such products are adulterated and misbranded under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and warned that failing to correct the violations could lead to civil money penalties, seizure or an injunction. Other 2026 letters cite websites selling unauthorized 15 mg and 16 mg pouches to U.S. customers, including ZYN-branded flavors from a Michigan retailer and pouches from a seller based in Sweden.

This is the first thing an underwriter checks. A catalog of authorized products is a reviewable file. A catalog full of unauthorized high-strength pouches is a list of products the FDA has said are illegal to sell, and no acquirer can approve processing for them.

Where the PACT Act and the mail ban are unclear

Online tobacco sellers deal with the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act, which requires sellers of cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and electronic nicotine delivery systems to register with ATF and state tax administrators, report shipments, verify age and use delivery methods that check age at the door. Whether it reaches nicotine pouches depends on definitions written before pouches were widely sold.

The Act defines smokeless tobacco as any finely cut, ground, powdered or leaf tobacco, or other product containing tobacco, intended to be placed in the mouth or nose or otherwise consumed without being burned. Its definition of an electronic nicotine delivery system covers electronic devices that deliver an aerosol, which a pouch is not. A pouch made with synthetic nicotine contains no tobacco at all. Whether one made with nicotine extracted from tobacco is a product containing tobacco is a question the statute does not answer.

The same question decides whether pouches can go through the U.S. mail. Under 18 U.S.C. 1716E, cigarettes and smokeless tobacco are nonmailable, and the law uses the PACT Act's definitions of both terms.

We are not going to settle the question here, and you should not settle it with a blog post either. Ask a tobacco regulatory attorney how your products are classified, and get your carrier's tobacco and nicotine policy in writing before you ship. Expect an acquirer to ask how you handle both.

State law decides what you can sell where

Even where federal law is unsettled, state law often is not. Two examples show how far it reaches.

California

California banned the retail sale of flavored tobacco products under Senate Bill 793. Assembly Bill 3218, in effect since January 1, 2025, expanded that ban and created the Unflavored Tobacco List. The Attorney General published the first list on December 31, 2025. Any covered tobacco product not on it is treated as flavored and cannot be sold in the state, and the implementing regulations name nicotine pouches as one of the product categories that manufacturers apply under. Delivery sellers can face civil penalties for selling unlisted products, so an online store shipping into California needs to check each product against the list, not just remove mint and fruit flavors.

Washington

Since January 1, 2026, Washington has applied its tobacco products tax to any product containing nicotine, whether the nicotine comes from tobacco or is made synthetically. The Department of Revenue names synthetic nicotine pouches among the products now covered. The tax is 95 percent of the taxable sales price, and retailers and distributors had to report their existing nicotine inventory on the first return due after the change took effect.

Other states regulate flavors, licensing, delivery sales and excise tax in their own ways, and they change often. An underwriter will expect you to know the rules in every state you ship to and to show how your checkout enforces them.

How Visa classifies a nicotine pouch store

Visa's Merchant Data Standards Manual assigns MCC 5993, Cigar Stores and Stands, to merchants that sell tobacco, cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, cigars, pipes and smokers' supplies, including smoke shops and tobacco shops. A store selling nicotine pouches will usually be coded there.

For card-absent transactions, MCC 5993 is on Visa's list of high-integrity risk MCCs, alongside codes such as outbound telemarketing, dating services and betting. That has practical consequences:

• An acquirer must apply to Visa and be approved before it can process for high-integrity risk merchants, which includes a financial review and compliance with Visa's acceptance risk standards.
• The acquirer must register each high-integrity risk merchant with Visa before submitting its transactions. Visa can assess the acquirer USD 2,000 per unregistered merchant per month.
• The acquirer must monitor the merchant's daily sales volume, average ticket, transaction count and disputes against a baseline, and send Visa the original underwriting package within 7 days if asked.
• Visa may disqualify a high-integrity risk merchant from accepting Visa if its dispute activity reaches a critical level or it tries to circumvent Visa programs.

A shop that sells pouches only at the counter is in a different position from one that ships them, because the high-integrity risk designation for MCC 5993 applies to card-absent sales.

Visa's new age check excludes tobacco

On 24 October 2026, Visa added rules for its Age Validate and Birthdate Validate services, which let a participating merchant ask the card issuer to confirm a cardholder's age. Merchants using MCC 5993 may not use them. The same rules prohibit marketing the services as meeting any legal obligation. A pouch seller still needs its own age verification at checkout and, where required, at delivery.

What an underwriter will ask a pouch seller

Expect an acquirer to want evidence that you know what you sell and where it can legally go:

• A product list showing, for each pouch, the brand, flavor, nicotine strength and whether it has an FDA marketing granted order. If you sell products still under FDA review, say so and explain why.
• Supplier and import records, especially for any stock made outside the United States.
• Your state-by-state restriction table, including how checkout handles California's Unflavored Tobacco List and any state you do not ship to.
• How you verify age at checkout, and whether deliveries require an adult signature.
• Your PACT Act position, your carrier's written policy and any state tobacco licenses or tax registrations.
• Your website as customers see it: age gate, product descriptions, refund, return and shipping policies.
• Monthly volume, average order value, the share of sales that are online and any subscription or auto-ship programs.

Health claims deserve a careful read before you apply. In June 2026 the FDA issued modified risk granted orders allowing 20 ZYN products to be marketed with a specific claim comparing their risk with cigarettes. That permission belongs to those products and that wording. A store that writes its own reduced-risk or quit-smoking claims about pouches gives an underwriter a reason to stop.

Keeping chargebacks low

Pouch stores often sell by subscription, and subscriptions produce disputes when customers forget they signed up or cannot find a way to cancel. Make the renewal date and price clear at signup, send a reminder before each charge and keep cancellation as easy as ordering. Our guide to free trial and subscription billing rules covers the network requirements.

For each order, keep the age verification result, the product page and policies the customer accepted, carrier tracking and delivery confirmation, AVS and card security code results, and any customer contact. That record answers both fraud disputes and claims that an order never arrived.

A nicotine pouch business that sells authorized products, enforces state restrictions at checkout and verifies age at every step is a reasonable file for a high-risk acquirer. If that describes your store, talk to a PayKings specialist about an account built for tobacco and nicotine sales.