Back on September 12th, Hawaii stated that they have the intentions to be come the first state to make marijuana sales handled completely without cash. This would hopefully help cut down robberies and other crimes related to the processing and sales of marijuana.
There are currently eight licensed dispensaries throughout Hawaii, and they all stand in agreement that they would like to go cashless by October 1st. The hopes are that the dispensaries will ask the patients to use an app that would go by either credit or debit payments, instead of cash. This app has already been an option in several states such as California and Colorado, but has never been the sole option.
The state of Hawaii’s financial institutions commissioner, Iris Ikeda stated that they were in discussions regarding whether or not the patients can use cash if that is there only option. Ikeda stated that “Oct. 1 is our target date to try to go cashless as much as we can.”
The app they hope to use is known as CanPay which uses a Colorado-based credit union to help facilitate the payments. The dispensaries in Hawaii have hopes of setting up accounts with this bank that is known as Safe Harbor Private Banking.
Because of the cashless system, customers can hopefully use their checking and credit accounts to pay with CanPay, where the payments will then be processed by Safe Harbor.
For people who do not have bank accounts for some reason or another, the hopes are that some form of prepaid, stored-value cards can be used in place of a debit or credit card.
One of the legislators at the legislative coulee at Marijuana Policy Project, Becky Dansky stated that she hopes to change the federal law so that banks can use policies determined by their own local councils. This will help to avoid confusion when paying and will help to make marijuana dispensaries safer for all.
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