Every operator has the same story about cash. The ATM in the lobby that customers resent paying to use. The drawer that somebody has to count twice, reconcile, and get to the bank. The line that moves slower because the last three people needed change. And the part that actually shows up in your numbers: when a customer walks in with sixty dollars in their pocket, sixty dollars is what they spend. The basket is capped before your budtender says a word.
That has been the trade-off in cannabis retail for years, and it hasn't been because operators wanted it that way. Traditional card processing either turned you down outright or shut the account down a few months later, and the alternatives that would say yes tended to be expensive, slow to fund, and vague about who was actually in the payment chain.
CanPay was built specifically for that gap, and they've now been at it long enough to be the established option rather than the experimental one.
CanPay is a pay-by-bank solution built for state-regulated cannabis retailers and other highly regulated markets. Shoppers link a bank account in the CanPay app, and payments move through a network of financial institutions that already know exactly what kind of business is being transacted. Funds flow through US-based financial networks, and the transaction runs under your DBA name.
On the retailer side, that means every member of the payment chain is aware and compliant, so the account doesn't disappear on you. On the shopper side, it means a checkout that behaves like every other digital payment they use, which is the whole point. Nobody has to learn a new process just to pay you.
The consumer traction is the part worth paying attention to. CanPay has awarded over a million dollars in discounts through its points program, and it layers in a rewards mechanic that people genuinely engage with, spinning for points every time they check out. The practical effect is that CanPay users go looking for stores that accept it. That's a demand signal, not just a payment rail. Their retailer network already includes Trulieve, Cookies, Ayr, Beyond/Hello, Theory Wellness, and Parallel, alongside a long list of independents across the country.
CanPay is now available as a native payment method inside AIQ Ecommerce. Once it's on, shoppers can pay with CanPay for in-store orders, curbside and in-store pickup, kiosk orders, and cashless delivery. You choose which order types accept it, so you can roll it out where it makes sense and expand from there.
The checkout experience is where this gets good. During checkout, AIQ automatically detects whether a logged-in shopper already has a CanPay account. If they do, and it's authorized for your location, we log them in automatically and prepayment happens without them touching anything extra. A shopper who has a CanPay account but hasn't shopped with you before logs into the CanPay widget once, and their credentials are saved from that point forward. So the friction is a single one-time step, and after that it's effectively invisible.
For in-store kiosk orders, the shopper selects CanPay, the order generates a QR code, and they scan it and complete payment from their own phone. No terminal, no drawer, no hand-off.
Worth being clear on the mechanics, because payments are one area where surprises are expensive.
When an order is placed, CanPay runs an authorization to confirm the shopper has sufficient funds. The money actually moves when the order is closed in AIQ Ecommerce, which is when we trigger the capture. If an order gets cancelled in AIQ Ecommerce before that, we void the authorization in CanPay automatically, so you're not chasing anything down manually.
To participate, your store needs to be banking with a CanPay-approved financial institution. If you're already accepting CanPay in-store, you have what you need.
Prepayment changes the shape of an order. An order that's already authorized before pickup is an order the customer has committed to, and it moves through your queue differently than one that still needs a payment conversation at the counter. Faster handoffs, fewer abandoned pickups, and a shorter line during your busiest hours.
It also means the transaction lives inside an AIQ Ecommerce order attached to a logged-in shopper account, which is the same account your loyalty program, segments, and messaging already run against. Digital checkout gives you an order record where cash gives you very little.
And there's the basket question we started with. Electronic payment removes the ceiling that cash puts on a purchase, and it gives your team room to actually recommend something at the point of sale, because the customer hasn't already decided how much they're allowed to spend.
Setup takes a few minutes. Grab your App Key and API Secret from CanPay, head to Store > Integrations > CanPay in your AIQ dashboard, enable the integration, and paste them in. Then go to Store > Settings and turn CanPay on for each order type you want it available for.
Full walkthrough is in the AIQ Help Center. If you don't have your CanPay credentials yet, reach out to CanPay directly at sales@canpaydebit.com and they'll get you sorted.
More ways to pay, less friction at checkout.
Learn more about the AIQ x CanPay integration
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