The Problems With Cash for Cannabis Businesses

Despite expected sales of nearly $30 billion by 2025, most state legal cannabis businesses are still operating mostly with cash. With few alternative solutions available, cash reliance has become an unfortunate reality in the cannabis industry. And it causes a lot of problems for cannabis businesses.‍

Cost of Cash Management‍

Accepting almost exclusively cash means cannabis businesses are forced to do a ton of cash management, which involves the collection, handling, and overall usage of cash. This process comes at a high cost to these businesses in both dollar value and time spent. It also carries the risk of theft from customers and employees. Needless to say, it’s a massive headache for owners and operators in the space.‍

‍Difficulty Tracking and Reporting‍

Another hurdle for cannabis businesses due to their dependency on cash is accurately tracking and reporting their payments. Not having an organized record for each payment can become a nightmare. This causes issues reconciling payments, scrutiny from marijuana enforcement, and complications when it comes time for taxes. ‍

Poor Customer Experience‍

Lastly, offering cash as the only payment option at cannabis businesses is a burden on customers. It requires them to have cash on them or worse yet, succumb to unnecessary ATM fees. A poor customer experience is a bad look for businesses.

The problems presented by cash for cannabis businesses are clear. The cannabis industry has long been underserved by the current payments landscape and has eagerly awaited disruption in the payments space. Enter digital payments.

Digital payments present a solution to these challenges faced by cannabis businesses. They help fill a void for cannabis businesses that have often been left behind by traditional payments companies.

With digital payments, cannabis businesses can reduce their use of cash, have documentation of every payment received in an organized dashboard, and provide an enhanced experience for customers at the point-of-sale.

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To learn more about AeroPay’s suite of compliant digital payments solutions for cannabis businesses, click here.