Why Aren’t Credit Cards Allowed at Dispensaries?

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Source: The Cannabis Cash Conundrum — The Top Challenges For Banking & Buying Legal Buds

Everyone lately has been raging all about cashless transactions. It’s even gotten to the point where some places have ATMs to make you transfer your cash onto a reloadable card because they strictly only take cashless payments! By doing it this way, it eliminates the exchange of germs and makes the overall transaction process a seamless one. So why can’t it be this way when you go out to buy weed?

It’s crazy to think that you can only ever pay cash for something that is now legal, you should have the option to pay however you choose, but that simply isn’t how it works. Most dispensaries only take cash and sure, some of them have found loopholes around this, but it still doesn’t explain why.

The reason as to why dispensaries strictly only take cash can easily be explained by the fact that weed isn’t yet legal at a federal level and that therefore isn’t backed by banks. There still is a lot of grey language when discussing cannabis rights on a national level and it puts federal banks in a tricky possession. Due to the lack of legal clarity banks can’t back marijuana sales, this is mainly done to protect the banks. If anything was to negatively affect the industry revenue, banks will not be protected at a government level, since weed has yet to be legalized at a national level.

Although, like I mentioned earlier, dispensaries have found ways to provide cashless experiences for the consumer. Dispensaries at this moment run a great risk by only accepting cash. By strictly only dealing with cash they have to invest in quality security and safes to protect the money. This also can put the bud tender at risk, due to the high quantities of bills they are handling throughout their workday. So one can really blame them for wanting to go the paperless route. Many of them have started to implement the same ATMs that move money over onto cashless payments options. However, this also seems to be causing a great deal of problems also. Many big financial institutions have been warning dispensaries not to do this and have been trying hard to prevent these ATMs from being installed in dispensaries.