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As a Merchant of Record, Waffo Pancake is responsible for every transaction processed through our platform. To maintain compliance with payment networks, financial regulations, and applicable laws, certain product and service categories are either restricted (accepted only under specific conditions) or prohibited entirely.
Selling prohibited products will result in immediate account suspension and potential fund withholding. If you are unsure whether your product qualifies, contact support before listing.

Digital delivery only

Waffo Pancake supports digitally delivered products and services only. Two business models are outside what we can process, regardless of what is being sold:
  • Anything that requires shipping or other physical fulfillment
  • Anything whose substance is a person doing the work, including remotely
Both are covered in Prohibited Categories below, together with the exceptions that still qualify.

Prohibited Categories

The following categories are not permitted on Waffo Pancake under any circumstances, on any payment channel. An application rejected for a prohibited category cannot be appealed, and fixing the issue does not reopen it for resubmission.
  • Any child sexual abuse or exploitation material (CSAM), including AI-generated or synthetic material
  • Any product or service that sexualizes minors
This is an absolute red line with no exceptions.
We do not process payments for products that require shipping or any other physical fulfillment. This applies whatever the item is, and includes categories that were previously accepted under additional review:
  • Any product delivered by post, courier, or freight
  • General e-commerce and online retail storefronts selling physical inventory
  • Food, beverages, alcohol, and tobacco
  • Luxury goods, jewelry, and collectibles
  • Corrective contact lenses and other physical medical devices
  • Live animals
  • Printed books, physical media, and merchandise
Exception: purely digital delivery is unaffected. Downloads, license keys, hosted software, and digital media remain eligible.
Services whose substance is a person doing the work are not supported, whether delivered on site or remotely:
  • Video consultations, remote advisory, and paid one-to-one calls
  • Online tutoring, live lessons, and remote coaching
  • Tele-medicine and remote clinical services
  • On-site services of any kind, including repairs, cleaning, and events
Exception: software that only matches, books, or schedules human services is unaffected. The test is whether the buyer is paying for a person’s time or for the software itself.
  • Third-party game-card, game-currency, virtual-goods, and account top-up, recharge, or proxy-purchase services
  • Opening or topping up official accounts and memberships for third-party AI services on someone else’s behalf
  • Prepaid code and gift-card resale
  • Sale or loading of stored value cards
  • Marketplaces that collect payments on behalf of third-party sellers
  • eSIM and mobile data-plan sales or reseller services
  • Multi-user live voice chat rooms
  • One-to-one random voice or video matching with real people
  • Live-streaming platforms with tipping, gifting, or paid interaction
Exception: AI character chat products with no real people involved are unaffected — see the restricted categories below.
Products whose core business is deepfaking real people — face swapping, “nudify” tools, compositing real people into intimate scenes, or making real people appear to say or do things they never said or did. These are not accepted whether or not the people involved consent.The four forms that count, and how each is judged, are in AIGC Compliance: what counts as a deepfake.
Products or services that are illegal, facilitate illegal activity, or promote harm:
  • Controlled substances, narcotics, and drug paraphernalia
  • Counterfeit identity documents, fake IDs, fraudulent credentials, and forged official or corporate seals and stamps
  • Counterfeit currency
  • Sale of bank accounts, payment credentials, or verified identities
  • Telecommunications manipulation equipment (e.g., SIM cloners, call spoofing services)
  • Content that promotes, glorifies, or incites violence or hatred, or that discriminates on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, physical ability, sexual orientation, or age
  • Illegal political publications and programs, information that endangers national security or involves state secrets, and products or services that facilitate unlawful public gatherings
  • Essay writing, plagiarism, and examination fraud services
  • Human trafficking, organ trading, or any services facilitating the exploitation of persons
  • Prescription drugs and medical devices sold without the required licensing or a valid prescription process
  • Endangered species and products made from them
  • Smuggled goods and unauthorized sales of duty-free goods
  • Charities, political organizations, and religious organizations (payment collection via MoR is not appropriate for these entities)
  • Debt collection services
  • Selling, moving, or cashing out the proceeds of crime
  • Hacking services, intrusion for hire, and account takeover offerings
  • Malware, ransomware, spyware, and exploit kits
  • Stress-testing or “booter” services aimed at third-party infrastructure
  • Reverse face search, covert people-tracing, and OSINT identity dossiers
Products or services that violate intellectual property rights:
  • Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted media (films, music, books, software)
  • Counterfeit goods — replicas or imitations misrepresenting brand or origin
  • Illegal imports or exports of goods prohibited from cross-border trade
Products or services designed to deceive consumers or exploit participants:
  • Pyramid schemes, multi-level marketing structured around recruitment fees
  • Illegal fundraising and unlicensed deposit-taking
  • Get-rich-quick schemes, guaranteed investment returns, or unrealistic income claims
  • Predatory lending products with deceptive terms
  • Services that sell or artificially inflate social media engagement (fake likes, followers, views, or reviews)
  • Pornographic or sexually explicit content of any kind
  • Prostitution, escort services, or any form of commercial sexual services
  • Firearms, handguns, rifles, and replica firearms, plus related accessories and modification parts
  • Controlled knives and bladed weapons
  • Ammunition, explosives, and the materials used to make them
  • Toxic, hazardous, radioactive, or biological materials
  • Any items regulated under arms control or export control laws
  • Online casinos, poker, and all other forms of gambling, including gambling with cryptocurrency stakes
  • Sports betting and betting agents, sports forecasting competitions with cash prizes
  • Lotteries and sweepstakes where purchase is required for entry
  • Any cryptocurrency business, including exchanges (licensed or not), market-data products, wallets, custody, and key-management products
  • NFT marketplaces, mints, and NFT-based projects
  • Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)
  • Mining hardware and mining equipment sales
  • Stocks and securities, mutual funds, insurance, foreign exchange, and gold investment
  • Investment, wealth management, and financial advisory services
  • Lending, credit, and P2P lending
  • Payment by instalments
  • Money transfer and e-money services
  • Financial trading software
  • Crowdfunding platforms
The following behaviors violate our platform policies and will result in immediate termination:
  • Creating accounts under a false identity or impersonating another individual or business
  • Processing payments on behalf of an undisclosed third-party merchant
  • Structuring transactions to avoid chargebacks, fraud detection, or reporting thresholds
  • Distributing malware, ransomware, spyware, or any malicious software through the platform

Restricted Categories

These categories are accepted on Waffo Pancake, but require additional review and must meet specific conditions before you can begin selling. Contact our team to discuss your use case. Some of them also cannot be onboarded to certain payment methods — see Payment Method Eligibility. Whatever the category, if you sell subscriptions you must clearly disclose cancellation terms and get explicit customer consent for auto-renewal.
Approval for a restricted category does not guarantee ongoing eligibility. Waffo Pancake reserves the right to reassess accounts if business practices change or regulatory requirements are updated.

Payment Method Eligibility

Waffo Pancake settles through the following payment methods: The card networks accept every category this page allows. Local payment methods have their own eligibility rules: if your business falls under a list below, your account can still go live — that payment method simply will not be enabled, and your customers pay another way instead.

WeChat Pay

In addition to the Prohibited Categories above, WeChat Pay does not onboard the following, however the product is presented:
  • Skill games with any element of chance — games that combine skill with chance, a draw, or a loot mechanic; purely skill-based games are unaffected
  • AI chat and companion products built on real or photorealistic human likenesses — fictional and anime characters are unaffected
  • Divination, fortune-telling, and feng shui — including tarot, Chinese astrology (BaZi, Zi Wei Dou Shu), astrology, name selection, and feng shui
  • Advertising networks and ad tech — where ad placement or brokerage is your core business

Alipay

Alipay eligibility follows the Alipay prohibited and restricted list. In addition to the Prohibited Categories above, Alipay does not onboard the following:
  • Skill games with any element of chance — games that combine skill with chance, a draw, or a loot mechanic; purely skill-based games are unaffected
  • Rebate and cashback services
  • Lucky draws and auctions — lucky-draw mechanics, and auction sites and services
  • Online medical services — medical consultation, hypnotherapy, plastic surgery, and the like, even when delivered digitally
  • Video chat services
  • Religion and ancestor worship — all religious websites, publications, and articles, as well as online cemeteries and ancestor-worship services
  • Privacy and communications security — decryption and descrambler products and services, devices that jam communications, products that infringe personal privacy or corporate data (such as monitoring online activity), sale of personal information, and espionage equipment
  • Cashing out Alipay balances — using an Alipay account to extract cash
  • Invoice trading — buying or selling invoices issued in mainland China
  • Wallet and payment account top-ups — transactions that fund an e-wallet or other payment account (POI funding)
  • Other — unlicensed event ticket sales, pawn services, real estate, mail-order spouse services, and airlines and air carriers

Questions & Compliance

This list is not exhaustive. Waffo Pancake may restrict additional categories based on evolving regulations, payment network requirements, or risk assessments. For the complete and legally binding terms, refer to the Waffo Terms of Service.

Account Reviews

Learn about our merchant verification process.