Virtual Crypto Technologies Wants to Bring Mobile Payments to Cannabis Dispensaries

For anyone getting involved in the marijuana industry these days, it’s a crazy quilt of conflicting regulations, morality plays, and sheer bizarre contradictions that may well make it impossible to actually get anywhere. At least, in the short term. Companies like Virtual Crypto Technologies Inc. are working to cut through some of the noise to produce some potential solutions for this difficult market.

Virtual Crypto Technologies is working on a cryptocurrency payment product specifically geared toward the cannabis dispensary. The need for such a product became quite clear following months of banks cutting ties with any such operation, a disaster given how much of the cannabis market is a cash-only affair.

The product in question will allow customers to pay for their various cannabis products using cryptocurrencies, though just which is unclear. Bitcoin was specifically mentioned, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. Users will be able to scan QR codes to pay in cryptocurrency, backed up by Virtual Crypto’s NetoBit software, which can verify transactions against blockchain to speed things up.

Aion Dayan, Virtual Crypto Technologies’ CEO, noted “…We believe our technology can ultimately reduce the amount of cash moving through the cannabis ecosystem, which will help foster a safer work environment and ensure that industry participants pay their taxes using an alternate payment method. The Virtual Crypto solution is a win-win-win for dispensary owners (and farmers), consumers, and individual states, resulting in accountability, ease of use, and increased tax revenue to the state.”

The downside to such an approach, of course, is that suddenly the customer has to go buy cryptocurrency, a process which isn’t always easy to do. It’s getting easier, of course—depending on where you go—but it’s not just as simple as running down to the corner store, buying a Coke, and asking for your change in bitcoin. If dispensaries set up Wi-Fi connections which would allow customers to go to an exchange, in store, and make that purchase, that might go a long way.

There are some points about this which don’t work out quite so well, but there’s still plenty of room for this to work out. This might actually make banks think twice; they’re about to be pushed out of what may be a very big market.