In The Bay Area, MMJ Dispensaries Are No Longer Allowed To Accept Credit Cards
No other business that I’m aware of in California is effectively forced to be cash-only against their will. 
Medical marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area of California are being cut off from accepting credit cards as payment. Merchant Service Providers, the third party company between dispensaries and credit card companies, just announced that they will no longer be able to process payments for medical marijuana. Some credit card companies have actually offered to keep servicing medical marijuana retailers, but would charge them an enormous percentage, between 5-10% per transaction, an offer retailers are not going for.
Now medical marijuana patients will have to walk around with cash in their pockets, raising a safety issue, as they will become targets for petty thieves. The policy is also turning the entire medical marijuana business into a cash-only business. “No other business that I’m aware of in California is effectively forced to be cash-only against their will,” said Joe Alford of Americans for Safe Access, an activist group that supports safe and legal access to medical marijuana for therapeutic uses and research. Merchants are still allowed to accept debit cards however, with some dispensaries even cleverly setting up ATMs on premises.
Low-income medical marijuana patients are the ones who will suffer the most from this new policy. According to Americans for Safe Access, a person on a fixed income who once spent $270 on an eighth per month must now spend $320 in $40 eighth increments.
“Getting away from the cash-only lifestyle, having a bank account and paying taxes was what going legal was supposed to be all about… Shutting off cannabis buyers' credit is a crazy policy and it only helps criminals,” said Stephen DeAngelo, Executive Director of Oakland's Harborside Health Center.
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Monday, 09 July 2012
