Smoke / Vape Shop.

You check IDs all day, track a wall of inventory that turns over fast — glass, devices, e-liquid, papers, and whatever hemp-derived products Texas currently allows — and keep up with rules that change by the legislative session. Your regulars are working adults who know their brand. You’ve already survived flavor bans, PMTA confusion, and distributors who vanish; adaptability is basically your business model.

Payments should be the easy part, and it isn’t. Aggregator apps and many traditional processors prohibit tobacco and vape sales outright, so shops get signed up under general-retail codes by a rep chasing a commission. It runs fine until a risk review sees “smoke” in the business name or a card-brand audit flags the MCC, and then the terminal goes dark on a Friday — with the weekend’s deposits held. For a shop doing most of its volume in-store on thin margins, three days without card acceptance is real money, and switching processors in a panic usually means worse terms than boarding right would have.