Congratulations. You’ve cleared a lot of regulatory and supply hurdles to get a license to sell cannabis online or through a bricks-and-mortar store.
Now, how do you accept payments for your products?
To some, this may seem like minor housekeeping or a logistics issue. But the payment-processing method you choose can make a huge difference to the success and even survival of your cannabis business. You require a safe, secure, simple-to-use solution that caters to the needs of your customers and the regulatory demands of government.
Here are five reasons why a robust, scalable payment-gateway solution can help your cannabis retail operation.
1. We’re Fast Becoming a Cashless Society
Yes, cash is no longer king. In fact, being a cash-only cannabis business can be a turn-off to potential customers who are used to using various chip and PIN, and tap-and-pay debit and credit cards, and paying bills through online banking.
If you don’t provide the same kind of convenience, they will go elsewhere. Yes, there are processing fees associated with these kinds payment methods, but these would be more than offset by the greater profits you would realize by catering to the kinds of payment methods people like to use.
Also, do you want to spend time trundling to the bank making cash deposits? You can do things faster using an electronic payment-processing method. The digital record of customer transactions can also provide valuable data that will help your business grow.
2. Give Customers a Choice of Payment Methods
A payment-process solution is all about making things easy for customers, giving them a choice of payment methods they commonly use for financial transactions.
Many people like to pay in online and in physical stores with debit and credit cards. As a cannabis seller, you can set up a dedicated merchant account or intermediary holding account to accept payments from major cards that include Visa, Mastercard and American Express, as well as others, such as Diners Club, JCB and Discover.
With the increasingly proliferation of smartphones, mobile devices used as digital wallets are becoming more popular. And consumers are increasingly turning to a variety online payment methods, such as PayPal, WeChat, Google Pay and Apple Pay.
As a cannabis retailer, you must choose an advanced gateway solution that can safely and securely accept as many valid types of payment as possible.
3. Know Who You Are Dealing With
Cannabis is a strongly regulated industry. You must be able to verify who you are selling to. Are they of legal age? Do they live in another province or country? Have they already bought their legal limit of cannabis?
If you’re in a province that allows for private ecommerce stores, with the right advanced payment gateway solution in your ecommerce store, you can easily confirm that you aren’t selling to a minor and ensure that they are within your legal selling area. With Merrco’s payment gateway, for example, you can check more than 200 possible points of data in real time to verify who you are dealing with.
If you’re operating a retail storefront, there has to be a mechanism in place to validate regulatory requirements such as age and daily purchase limit.
4. Keep Transactions Secure
In an era of massive data breaches, putting people’s personal and financial information at risk, it’s important to offer a secure payment solutions.
The payment system must incorporate the latest precautions, including transactions secured with SSL protocol, compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), tokenization of data (so sensitive customer information isn’t stored on your servers) and other fraud-prevention tools.
5. Change as the Industry Does
Canada’s legal cannabis industry is new and evolving quickly, as government, suppliers and businesses are learning on the fly. So it is important to have an advanced payment-process solution that is flexible, customizable to your needs, and easily integrated with your existing business systems.
A proven leader leader in payment-processing solutions for the cannabis market, Merrco can set you up with the right payment solution to your business thrive.