CanPay Offers Mobile Payments for Medical Marijuana

The issue of medical marijuana is one that’s likely not going away soon, and has almost as many opinions surrounding it as any other. However, in many places, it’s still going ahead full steam, and now there’s even a new mobile payment system geared specifically toward medical marijuana purchases.

Dubbed CanPay, it’s considered the first “legitimate debit payment product for the cannabis industry.” It’s also set up a partnership with Harborside, the current leader in dispensary services for medical marijuana, to use CanPay as a cashless payment option for the delivery transactions currently running out of its San Jose and Oakland venues. With over 200,000 registered patients to its credit, Harborside is a big deal, and this gives CanPay a whole new credibility in the field.

Use is said to be fairly simple; signing into the CanPay mobile app generates a single-use payment token, which the Harborside employee can scan and complete the transaction. Since it’s a tokenized system, that provides extra security and makes it much less likely a data breach will get anything useful.

CanPay’s CEO, Dustin Eide, noted “Patients who rely on cannabis for preexisting medical conditions should not have to be inconvenienced or have their safety put at risk by a cash-only model. Delivery is a mainstream solution and payments should be able to keep up with the industry. By partnering with Harborside, we are providing their patients the benefits of more secure, transparent transactions.”

Eide appears unaware here is that a “cash-only model” really hasn’t been a thing in the medical marijuana field for some time now. In fact, there’s a mobile payment system that’s already been in place for better than a year now, a cryptocurrency known as PotCoin, that’s specifically geared toward the medical marijuana field as well as investment speculation. Indeed, regular bitcoin likely would have done the job here too as well, as it’s anonymous, largely untraceable, and functions like an electronic cash payment.

CanPay might be more convenient than turning to cryptocurrencies, but CanPay’s advance here is possibly more incremental than anything else. Still, for those who turn to the substance, it’s likely a welcome addition.