2 Cashless Payment Options For Your Dispensary

Modern-day consumers are demanding more convenience from their shopping experience, including from cannabis retailers. However, many consumers don't understand that because cannabis is still a federally prohibited substance, businesses that sell it can't often use the same tools as other retailers, including traditional cashless payment methods.

Undoubtedly the day will come when the cannabis industry becomes legitimized, and it will no longer be challenging to find reliable e-commerce and cashless payments options. However, in the meantime, dispensaries must find creative solutions to overcome these hurdles. This article will outline some of the downsides of limiting your dispensary only to cash, as well as some cashless payments options that you can offer to your customer base today. 

Cash only dispensaries - pitfalls and problems 

Dispensaries that opt to be cash-only businesses increase their risk by keeping high amounts of cash on site. Having a lot of money on site not only makes a cannabis retailer vulnerable to theft but increases costs to your store for storing, transporting, and managing all of that pesky cash. 

Cash also invites internal fraud at a dispensary, whether intentional or not. For example, an employee might forget to give the correct change for a curbside pickup or pocket the change. This situation may not be a big deal if it happens once or twice; however, if a mistake like this repeats hundreds of times, the lost revenue can be very detrimental to your bottom line. In addition, cash discrepancies end up affecting your books downstream and lead to more headaches for your accounting staff. 

The most crucial drawback of having a cash-only dispensary is having a less than desirable customer buying experience. Offering cash-only transactions will bring down your average order value because it often limits what a customer can spend in-store.  

What is TreezPay, and how does it help you?

TreezPay has two payment solutions that give more transaction options to your customers and boost your revenue, including:

• PIN Debit Payments
• ACH Payments

We will dive into the details of each a bit later, but first, why implement SellTreez Pay for your dispensary in the first place?

TreezPay solutions increase the average order value for cannabis retailers by $35 or more. Payment solutions from TreezPay also decrease the average ticket transaction time by 15% and reduce cash on-site by up to 30%.

That means you can complete more transactions in less time and reduce costs while substantially increasing revenue. 

Integrated PIN Debit - TreezPay solution

Integrated PIN (personal identification number) debit transactions allow your customer to pay for their cannabis products directly through their debit card. 

Each terminal in your dispensary is equipped with hardware integrated into your POS (point-of-sale) solution. Your customer swipes, taps, or inserts their debit card and enters their PIN to pay for a transaction, just as they would do at any other retailer. Because the required PIN on the transaction greatly reduces the possibility of fraud, processing fees for PIN debit transactions are the lowest out of any other card transaction and are not subject to interchange fees. 

• Payments to the penny. With TreezPay integrated PIN Debit, your transactions are charged at exactly the transaction amount, which means there is no need to return change to your customer or charge them a transaction fee.
• Tipping. Incentivize your budtenders by giving your customers the ability to add a tip with pre-calculated prompts based on a percentage of the total transaction.
• NFC Payments. TreezPay integrated PIN debit allows for NFC (near-field communication) technology so that your customers can use Apple Pay or Google Pay with their connected debit card. NFC payments use RFID technology to read the debit card information directly from your customer's mobile phone.

Integrated PIN debit transactions are flexible in a variety of purchasing scenarios. Your customers can use their debit cards to pay for their order with integrated PIN debit in-store, for a curbside pickup, or even delivery orders. PIN debit is very convenient for your customers when it comes to paying for a delivery order. The PIN debit terminals connect to the internet cellularly, which means that your drivers won't have to make change or carry back cash to the dispensary for orders paid through this method. 

See the video demonstration below to understand what an integrated PIN debit transaction looks like in SellTreez: 

ACH Payments - TreezPay Solution

What are ACH Payments?

ACH is an abbreviation for Automated Clearing House, a network used to move money electronically between bank accounts across the United States. ACH payments facilitate electronic bank-to-bank payments in the US. In the cannabis industry, ACH payments are specifically valuable for facilitating an end-to-end online transaction for cannabis consumers looking to order and pay for their weed through digital commerce. 

ACH allows your dispensary to connect and take funds for a transaction directly from a customer's bank account without the use of debit or credit cards. Let's walk through a scenario where ACH is used to pay for an order placed online from your dispensary website or third-party menu.

A customer browses an online menu and adds their desired products to their cart. When they are ready to checkout, they have two options for payment, "Checkout & Pay Now" or "Checkout & Pay Later." If the customer selects "Checkout & Pay Now," the interface will then prompt the customer to link their bank account to the system. The customer then links their bank account directly to the transaction through our compliant banking partner, Stronghold. Finally, to finish the transaction, the customer selects the checking account they just linked and clicks "pay now."

What features and benefits are included in TreezPay ACH Payments?

E-commerce experience. Offer a modern shopping experience to your dispensary customers by giving them the ability to shop, checkout, and pay directly online from your website or third-party menu.

• Automated communication with your customer. Once the transaction is complete, your customer will receive email notifications about their order so that they are completely up-to-date.
• Quick settlement times. Stronghold is our compliant banking partner that facilitates ACH payments for SellTreez customers. They promise that funds typically transfer from one bank account to another within 24 hours.

ACH payments are ideal for e-commerce cannabis orders from dispensaries. ACH payments allow your customers to pay for order ahead, delivery, or curbside pickup orders directly online before receiving their product. For those customers that prefer a digital shopping experience, ACH payments provide the convenience we've become accustomed to. 

See the video demonstration below to understand what an integrated ACH transaction looks like in SellTreez: 

Modernize your cannabis shopping experience

As cannabis commerce becomes more normalized and sophisticated, cannabis retailers are no longer tethered to cash. We're all looking forward to a future where cannabis can be purchased like any other good. However, until that day comes, our TreezPay solutions are here to serve and provide you with more options.

Dispensaries see an average increase of 26% in monthly revenue after switching to TreezPay.

Provide your customers with increased convenience and a boost to your revenues with TreezPay. Book some time with our team today for a free, no-obligation demo of TreezPay and learn how Treez can add value to your business.