Mastercard demands US cannabis shops stop accepting debit cards

Kinda an incendiary headline when it’s just Mastercard complying with the law. From the article: "The federal government considers cannabis sales illegal, so these purchases are not allowed on our systems," Really the issue is that Marijuana should be legal at the federal level.

There should be a law prohibiting these payment companies to be picky when it comes to legal transactions.

Cannabis? Oh man we can't break the law. Better not chance it.

Some weird Bitcoin mortgage backed security being bought by Goldman Sachs to resell to their pension holders? Oh so good.

I hope people remember these companies and politicians who attempted to blockade Cannabis businesses when it is invariably made federally legal. They will more than likely never face the consequences of their stupidity while they turn a blind eye to armed robberies that are specifically caused by these policies yet get fat on the tax revenue regardless.

The idea that we need to plead fealty to these degenerates to get them to take common sense approaches to issues that the majority of the voter base has agreed on for a decade is ridiculous. No matter how anybody personally feels about Cannabis consumption it never has and never will go away. Prohibition doesn't work, and attempting to legislate other peoples ethics is a losing gambit.

Step 1.) Add ATM in lobby. Step 2.) Tell customers they can't use cards because of laws. Step 3.) Customer uses debit card at ATM and then purchases weed with the cash they just used their debit card to get.

Fuck it. Not hard at all.

Time to change lines of business. "We're a taco shop, but you can buy weed here in compliamce with local laws. Sorry if you receipt just says TACOS no matter what you buy. We're working on that."

Not surprising. Well, cash still exists, right? Or Monero..

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

Except Mastercard is lying, FinCEN has specifically issued guidance for national finance institutions (banks, credit cards, etc.) to be able to accept cannabis transactions in states that have legalized. Most of these finance institutions are just unwilling to accept the additional cost of complying with the regulations. There’s a reason why Valley National Bank is so popular with cannabis companies - it’s a national bank that follows FinCEN guidelines. It comes at a higher cost, but a lot of companies feel it’s worth it.

And this FinCEN guidance wasn’t just issued - it was issued in 2014. The only reason the cannabis industry doesn’t have widespread access to traditional finance, and why banks keep lobbying for the SAFE Banking Act, is because the banks don’t want to have to do the extra work to comply with the FinCEN guidance.

Note - I agree it’s stupid that cannabis is federally illegal and think it should be legalized (or at the very least deschedule it and let states decide if they’ll allow it). But Mastercard could choose to follow FinCEN guidance if they wanted to.

If you think about it, do you really want a history of federal crimes recorded on your bank account...?

ITT: Plenty of people who don’t understand how federal vs state laws work in regards to federally regulated businesses

No dispensary here accepts anything but cash because of the legalities anyway

fuck debit itself no more losing money

Lol. Cash is a thing you fucking idiots