Benzinga | Jul 16, 2021 12:46PM EDT

Cannabis Dispensary Shopping With New Cashless Payments: Rewards la Starbucks With App Available Via Apple And Google

Now you can buy cannabis at Holistic Industries' Liberty dispensaries the same way you buy coffee at Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX): on your phone and with rewards.

The Cash Issue

A majority of the cannabis industry seems to think that cannabis consumers should be able to buy products without having to carry cash or pay an ATM fee at a dispensary. However, due to lingering Federal prohibition, that convenience remains nearly impossible.

Seeking to address this issue, Holistic Industries spent the last several months focusing on the development of a platform that would keep customers and employees safe by allowing for cashless transactions. At the same time, they needed to tackle the regulatory hurdles associated with communicating directly with customers through SMS or social media and to differentiate themselves from other retailers with consumer incentives.

The solution to all of those challenges became available last week with the introduction of Liberty Wallet, a cashless payment and rewards app designed specifically around patients' and customers' needs.

"Loyalty programs are usually designed to secure customer loyalty for the business, but we built Liberty Wallet so we can be loyal to our customers," said John Brown, CTO and CIO of Holistic Industries. "In addition to addressing the industry-wide issue of cashless payments, in an increasingly competitive market, we really thought about how we could use technology and innovation to distinguish ourselves from other cannabis retailers and deliver on our mission to be the best place to shop."

Coupling Loyalty And Cashless Payments

Other cashless payment technologies have been developed for the industry, however, most of them don't provide incentives for consumers to use them, other than not having to carry cash. With Liberty Wallet, users get money back in the form of credits for simply using it. Liberty customers can download the Liberty Wallet app for free and connect it to their bank to receive their purchase credits.

"Cannabis consumers want to get the most out of their shopping experience, including a convenient, safe and secure way to pay," Brown added. "We are giving them all of that and more with Liberty Wallet; it's just like using Venmo or the Starbucks Rewards app but for cannabis."

Liberty Wallet is available for download on the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Play Store.

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