• cassetti@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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

    • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      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.

        • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          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:

          • Not two kids in a trench coat.
          • Not otherwise forbidden from buying cannabis by state law.
          • Not all cracked out.
          • Not buying in bulk amounts so that you can give/sell that good shit out to all your friends
          • Not a Federal Bikini Inspector or a Constantly Interjecting Asshole working with the Dipshits Eating Assoles who’s sole mission is to ruin everything for everyone
          • Obeying the laws of the state while buying the goods
          • fidodo@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Uh, I pretty much only order delivery in California. They just check your ID at the door, same as with alcohol delivery.

      • cassetti@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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).