If your Instagram shop was not approved, or Instagram says shopping is not available for your account, Meta has decided your account doesn’t meet its Commerce Eligibility Requirements or that what you sell breaks its Commerce Policies. The most common reasons are being located in a country where Shops aren’t offered, selling products Meta doesn’t allow (such as digital downloads or services), product links that don’t point to a single website you own, and a website without clear refund and return policies.
Most of these can be fixed, but a few can’t, and it saves a lot of time to know which one you are dealing with before you request another review. This guide walks through each cause in the order you should check it, using what Meta’s own help pages say, then covers how to request a review and how to avoid getting rejected again.
Which case are you in?
Start by working out whether the problem is your whole account or individual products. Meta treats them separately, and the fix is different.
- The shopping option never appears, or setup says you aren’t eligible: check your country first (it may simply not be offered there).
- Your shop or commerce account was reviewed and not approved: one of the five eligibility requirements failed, most often the domain, trust signals or policies on your website.
- Your shop is approved but some products show as pending or not approved: those items are being checked against the Commerce Policies.
- Tagging worked before and has stopped: look for a policy violation in Business Support Home, and check whether you are travelling, since Meta says leaving a supported country can remove product tagging.
- Everything you sell is digital or a service: Instagram Shopping isn’t built for that, and no review will change it.
Cause 1: your country isn’t supported
Meta only offers Shops on Facebook and Instagram, including tagging products on Instagram, to businesses located in supported countries. According to Meta’s Business Help Center, the full experience is available in the United States (excluding US territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam).
A second group is in open beta, where some sellers may not have every feature: Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Ukraine and Indonesia have limited Shops functionality. If your country isn’t on the list, the honest answer is that there is no setting to change. Check Meta’s page again later, because the list does change.
Two details catch people out. Meta says a shop’s location comes from the commerce account it belongs to, which may be based on the country chosen when the shop was set up in Commerce Manager or Shopify, the location of the person who created it, or other factors. And if you travel temporarily outside a supported country, you may lose the ability to tag products on Instagram until you are back.
Cause 2: Meta doesn’t allow what you sell
Every product in a shop has to follow Meta’s Commerce Policies. Some categories are prohibited outright, and if your catalog is mostly made of them, the shop won’t be approved however good the rest of your setup is.
The prohibited list includes downloadable digital content, digital subscriptions and digital accounts; alcohol; tobacco products; medical and healthcare products, including medical devices and ingestible supplements; prescription products and drugs; weapons; animals; recalled products; used cosmetics or cosmetics not in their original packaging; and counterfeit or copyright-infringing goods. Content that offers nothing for sale, such as news or humour posts, is also not allowed as commerce content.
Some categories are restricted rather than banned. Event tickets, gift cards and vouchers, and pet adoption matching services are only allowed for approved sellers. Services are not allowed in shops at all, except through the WhatsApp Business app or Appointments on Facebook or Instagram. So coaches, designers, course creators and anyone selling files or memberships will hit this wall.
Cause 3: your account doesn’t meet the trust and policy checks
Meta’s requirements apply to an Instagram professional account, so switch from a personal account first if you haven’t. The account and any linked Facebook Page must follow Instagram’s Terms of Use, the Community Standards and Meta’s commerce terms. A history of violations can block approval or remove commerce features later.
Meta also says your account must show “demonstrated trustworthiness, including through an authentic, established presence”, which may include maintaining a sufficient follower base. Meta does not publish a follower number, so be wary of any article that quotes one. In practice, a brand-new account with a handful of posts is harder to approve than one with a real posting history and a bio that clearly says what the business sells.
Meta may also ask you to verify your business information or identity to confirm the account belongs to a legitimate business. If you get that request, complete it before doing anything else.
Cause 4: your website or domain doesn’t qualify
This is the most common fixable reason. Meta requires your Instagram account to contain product listings that are available for direct purchase from your website, and you must give Meta the single, non-shortened domain you sell through. Your Instagram account must represent the store or website on that domain. Short links and links that point to someone else’s domain don’t count.
Every product link in your catalog has to be on that one primary domain. Meta’s example: if your domain is jaspersmarket.com, a product link should look like jaspersmarket.com/striped-shirt-12345. Subdomains and regional domains are supported, but products that link to a different domain can’t be tagged. Fix them by editing your data feed, editing the items in Commerce Manager, or updating the links on your ecommerce platform so they sync. Since September 2025, Meta says shops use website checkout, so customers are sent to your own site to pay; your product pages need to work as real, buyable pages.
Meta may ask you to verify the domain. In Meta Business Suite, go to Settings, then Brand safety, then Domains, click Add, and enter the root domain without www or https. You can verify by adding a meta tag to your home page’s HTML, uploading an HTML file to your site’s root folder, or adding a DNS TXT record. You need full control of the business portfolio and admin access to the domain.
- Show your refund and return policy clearly on your website, or on Facebook or Instagram. Meta lists this as a requirement.
- Make sure prices and stock on Instagram match the website. Meta says product information must not contain misleading pricing or availability.
- Take the website out of maintenance or password-protected mode while you are being reviewed, so it can actually be checked.
Rejected products or a rejected shop: how to request a review
If your shop is approved but certain items show as pending or not approved, Meta says it is likely they conflict with its Commerce Policies. Meta says the review usually takes a few seconds, but some items get a more detailed review that takes longer. Products that fail don’t appear in your shop and can’t be tagged.
To ask for a second look, go to Commerce Manager, select your catalog, open the Catalog tab and go to Products. Under Filters, find Issues and select Policy violations. Tick up to 100 rejected products, click Request review, read the policy issue listed for each one, then submit. Meta says reviews typically take up to a few days, and you can submit up to 5,000 products for review every 7 days.
Fix the product before asking if you can. Once a review is finished, you can’t request another one for the same product unless you edit it first. Clear photos, accurate titles and descriptions without health claims or brand names you don’t own help avoid rejections in the first place.
For a rejected shop or commerce account, the same rule applies: only request a review once you have fixed whatever failed, because re-submitting an unchanged account is unlikely to change the result. Start in Meta Business Support Home, which shows the status of your business portfolio, commerce accounts and catalogs, lists outstanding issues with the action you can take, and lets you request a review of assets you think were wrongly rejected.
If that doesn’t give you a clear route, contact support from Commerce Manager: select your shop, choose Help at the bottom of the left menu, and pick a topic such as Account setup, Rejected items or Request a review. You can choose email or, where available, live chat. Meta says email replies can take up to 24 hours and go to your business email. If you manage your shop through a platform such as Shopify, Meta says to contact that platform’s support for integration problems.
Meta doesn’t publish a fixed turnaround for account-level reviews, and an approval isn’t guaranteed even after you fix everything. In your message, say exactly what you changed: the verified domain, the new returns page, the products you removed.
How to avoid being rejected again
Most rejections come down to Meta not being able to confirm that a real business sells real, allowed products from its own website. Keep the following in place and approvals tend to stick.
- Sell from one domain you own, verified in Business Suite, with every product link on it.
- Keep a visible returns and refund policy, contact details and an About page on the website.
- Keep prices and availability in your catalog synced with the site.
- Check new products against the Commerce Policies before adding them, especially supplements, cosmetics and anything digital.
- Post consistently on the account and keep it clear of policy strikes, since eligibility is checked continuously and can be lost later.
Selling while you wait (or if Shopping isn’t an option)
If you are waiting on a review, live outside a supported country, or sell digital products or services that Instagram Shopping doesn’t allow, you can still sell to your followers through the link in your bio. It won’t give you product tags on posts, but it gives people one tap to a page where they can buy.
A free OneSol page can hold your links, products, booking and contact forms in one place, and on Pro you take payments into your own Stripe, PayPal, Razorpay or Square account with no OneSol commission. It doesn’t get your Instagram shop approved, and it isn’t a replacement for your own website domain in Meta’s eligibility check, but it keeps sales coming in while you sort the shop out.