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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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So real talk, VISA isn't much better - if you have a business selling tobacco, cannabis, or firearm related products you have a really hard time taking payments online. Most big vendors (like Paypal, Square, etc) won't work with you once you hit $5k to $10k a year in sales (for small businesses starting out you'll slip by for a few months until you grow big enough to get manually audited).
Then you need to find special card processing banks who are approved by VISA to work with tobacco/firearm companies and go through all sorts of review before your store will be approved for processing payments.
And that's just selling hardware like pipes and accessories. I'm not even talking about the raw material itself.
This sucks, but it won't stop anyone, they'll simply switch to another service. I bet VISA's stock will pop tomorrow because of this news if it hasn't already haha
This really isn't that big of a deal anyways. Just deploy an ATM inside the shop as a courtesy. Bonus points if it's a nice machine that can give customers amounts in increments as little as $5.
Since your business has cash as it's main method of payment; it should be fairly simple to keep said ATM stocked up.
This at least would be the cheeky way to get around restrictions.
What about for delivery?
I highly doubt any sensible dispensary delivers their product! For obvious legal reasons, no, you have to go to their physical location and buy their product physically in-store so that they can make sure you're:
Uh, I pretty much only order delivery in California. They just check your ID at the door, same as with alcohol delivery.
Oh, a vampire; so no devils weed for you unless you ride out after sunset. :p
The way the dispensaries around me handle it is that they just do a cash withdrawal at the register as if I was using an ATM, so I pay the store in cash and the bank just sees it as getting cash back.
Lol I'm not talking about dispensary businesses. I'm talking about online shops selling hardware like glass pipes and stuff. It's dumb, but it affects many small businesses in the USA.
Sadly there is no simple way to install a virtual ATM for payments on an online store
The messed up part is that while you can't do tobacco product sales using Paypal in the USA, if you're outside the USA paypal will totally take your business. As I've been told directly from Paypal's representatives - they want our business, but it's VISA putting down the rules about what merchant services can work with tobacco/firearm/cannabis sales - and there aren't many in the country (Paypal, Square, etc are not on that list).
The hardware isn't illegal at any level, so it doesn't really affect headshops. Just dispensaries that sell cannabis itself; because cannabis is still federally outlawed.
Can you buy medicine from the pharmacy with online payment? Could not these products all process under that payment system?