Since mid-February Dreamer dispensary in Southampton has been working with a third-party platform who has made it possible for their customers to pay for cannabis using a credit card. Normally, because of the federal illegality of cannabis a dispensary cannot process a credit card transaction. Customers must either pay in cash or using their debit card.
Dreamer did market research that led them to find ReThink Pay, a California company that helps cannabis businesses find innovative payment solutions. Volkan Polatol who owns Dreamer described the technology as being similar to Venmo. ReThink uses blockchain technology to process the payment “on a parallel channel and stays off the credit card networks” according to Polatol.
The convenience of paying with credit comes at a price. A 6% fee is added to purchases to cover the cost of both the third-party platform and credit card processing fees. Customers can now pay using Visa, American Express, Mastercard, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.
Read the full story at BusinessWest here: https://businesswest.com/blog/local-firm-solves-the-riddle-of-cannabis-and-credit-cards/
