Dude where’s my payments?

Cannabis Industry Merchant Service Providers get shut down. How has this impacted retailers and at what cost? Learn how operators are mitigating theft and working with the National Cannabis Industry Association to drive Legislation.

In order to best understand what payment methods will suit you best, you must first understand the inherit risks that are associated.

Let’s put it bluntly there is no such thing as a federally compliant payment in Cannabis, not even cash. Given states have legalized the sale of medicinal / recreational cannabis, it is still very confusing and in some cases crippling when choosing your method of payments.

Cash is king.

Because federal banks legally can not to do business with the Cannabis Industry, retailers have limited options for securing their resources. This make dispensaries targets for theft. Criminals are coming after both product and cash which requires operators to make heavy investments in security systems. These include state of the art video surveillance, 24/7 On site security, steel doors, bullet proof glass, expensive safes, terrible insurance policies, and a lot of trips to your favorite credit union. State chartered credit unions are the only banks accepting cash from cannabis businesses.

Although cash comes with some inherit benefits, coins don’t. Coin change is a big problem for retailers as there has been a National coin shortage. What are you supposed to do when your angry customer is complaining over the .75c you can’t return to them? Do you give them customer credit? Do you make an adjustment or a discount? Point of Sale provider, Cannabis Cloud has created a “Round Up” feature that brings every cash related transaction up to the nearest dollar and lists the rounded total on the receipt as a “service fee due to national coin shortage.”

So what about Cashless ATM?

A Cashless ATM is where customers break out their Debit Card at the register to pay for their retail purchase. Just like any other ATM you are drawing against an even $10 or $20 amount from your bank account. So if your purchase was for $17, a bud tender would hand you back $3 cash in change for your purchase.

While there has been mixed results with Cashless ATM’s there was a crackdown made by Visa and Mastercard to shutdown these types of transactions on their network. A significant amount of retailers lost their capability to process all the sudden and had to revert to cash only payments. While a good chunk of the high risk payment providers were shut down, others continued processing without service interruption for reasons I will explain later.

Although Cashless ATM payments can mitigate some of the risks involved with cash on hand, they are subjected to a number of costs that can factor into your daily management and or customer experience. First, if your payment terminals are not integrated with your Retail POS, good luck reconciling your money at the end of the day. Bud tenders will frequently mis code payments on the POS and assign Card Payments to Cash Transactions or vice versa. This makes it extremely tedious to reconcile your books. On the other hand, everyone hates ATM fees. Our colleagues have witnessed fees as high as $25 in places like Las Vegas. Typically you will see most CATM fees between $3-3.50, however it is common to see them even higher.

What is different about Pin Debit?

Pin Debit allows charges to the penny. This is a cool way to allow customers to pay with their debit card without having to pay the ATM fees. It is relatively new and still unclear if these processors will get away with Miscoding their RCC. If you looked at the customers bank statement you would see the charge from your Dispensary just like a Cashless ATM however the way it got there is much different. Processors are telling networks and banks that these are “Pharmacy” transactions. When a customer calls the bank and discusses your transaction at a cannabis dispensary it would seem like things could start going down hill quick for both the payment provider and the merchant(dispensary). With all risk considered it remains as an option for many to process their payments. In conclusion what I’m about to share about Credit payments would make you consider Pin Debit twice.

How about plain Debit or Credit?

Don’t do it. This from personal experience has impacted my life. A close family friend was indicted and served time in Jail for fraudulently processing Credit Card payments for delivery giant Eaze. This was a get rich quick scheme that broke friendships, businesses, families, and a healthy portion of the retail cannabis industry. Just like Pin Debit, Credit charges are miscoded but in this case purchases were being identified as “Dog Treats” or “Flowers.” The charges would not show up on the customer bank statement as a purchase from a dispensary. If they ever were you could be guaranteed they soon were not. It is shocking to believe that anyone after the Eaze case would be offering Credit but hey it appears Cookies is doing it(as shown on linkedin). Sometimes the reward may just be greater than the risk even though it is still the highest.

In summary.

If you or your business are looking to service card payments for your customers choose your options wisely. In my own personal opinion you face the least amount of risk using an integrated Cashless ATM solution, however if the customer is demanding a more traditional debit experience then it could be worth running a cost/benefit analysis.

The bottom line is that those who have the most dynamic and redundant integrated card payment solution will be the most continuous while mitigating the risks of cash. The payment providers getting shut down do not have redundancy in their network providers or payment methods and therefore non sustainable.

Some payment providers will eat the time in jail and or fines as they are or were able to make a significant amount of money greater than the cost of the punishment.

Until we can successfully make legislative changes being pushed forward by the NCIA. Those who care about making change should donate to their cause and participate at Lobby Days 2023.