When does too much cash become a health risk? When you own a marijuana dispensary.

An estimated 70 percent of cannabis businesses use cash for all transactions.

Have you considered Electronic Payments to reduce handling cash?

Especially now with the increase in deliveries and curbside pick up.

Imagine too much cash from a business becomes a health and safety risk.

Well, if you own a Cannabis Dispensary this is a risk you have to take. Have you thought about the level of risk you are taking? Are there ways to minimize this risk? YES

Top Risks:

1. Business owners and their employees vulnerable to thefts and violent crime
2. Employee Theft- It’s estimated that workers steal approximately $200 billion in revenue from U.S. firms
3. Having to carry and process a large amount of cash
4. Health & Hygiene “Cash Money is Dirty” Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Money

Cash is a daily hassle. It needs to be counted repeatedly to balance the books and registers.

In 2019 Retail sales of medical and recreational cannabis in the United States reach over $12 Billion Dollars.

This means 8.4  billion dollars are being exchanged annually, with an average ticket sale of say $100 dollars, 7 million transactions are made monthly and 233,333 are done daily. This does not take into account the times the money is recounted for procedure and security purposes.

“To pay their taxes in Sacramento, some 30 city-approved marijuana shops have to stuff cash into backpacks and duffel bags and haul it to a set location each month, kept secret for security reasons.” *see article above

There are several cannabis-friendly options to take electronic payments.

Electronic payments include:

1. Cashless ATMs utilizing debit cards and ATM cards.
2. Mobile payments that make it secure and private for payments online or in-person doe deliveries or anywhere our app is accepted.

I have heard owners complain that some cashless ATMs will stop working without them knowing the cause and this makes for a lot of frustration.

My thoughts are as follow:

1. If the Cashless ATM works for 2 months then goes down for a month (worst case scenario) and this scenario keeps playing out for a year, your dispensary would be taking electronic payments for 8 months of the year. During those 8 months usually 50% of sales would run through electronic payments and statistically lead to an average ticket sale increase of 20% or more. Card payments are more efficient and less time consuming.
2. The mobile payment method. People are very comfortable with using their smartphones to make payments. There are tons of apps like Venmo, Zelle, Apple Pay and Google Pay. (Note these apps do not work with the cannabis industry). Our mobile payment method is cannabis focused. Money is deposited into a Cannabis FDIC insured bank then deposited into your FDIC insured bank immediately.

So, with all this information, would you still consider taking cash only when statistically accepting cards and mobile payments increase sales and improve hygiene?

Click HERE to schedule a meeting with our Paywana specialist!

Victor Arocho
Chief Revenue Officer
561-922-7894