Due to federal restrictions the federal government has prohibited banks from servicing the cannabis industry, thus making the cannabis industry primarily a cash based business. With banking providers in short supply, cannabis businesses are struggling to maintain the same financial services as other industries. Harry Brelsford of The CannaTech Group sits down with Katherine Corby to chat about the cannabis industry’s first digital credit and loyalty-enabled payments solution.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey, welcome back to the CannaTech podcast and with my friend Kathy Corby, Kathy, how you doing?
Katherine Corby
Doing great, thank you.
Harry Brelsford
Great Hey, you will never believe where I’m at a lot of my listeners know I’m in the Central Texas area, but I’m at my data center client up in Round Rock. And he bought an old fashioned Fire Station Fire Station Number three, and he’s renovated it to be office space and the Center for Entrepreneurship. Probably would have taken you a month of Sundays to guess that one.
Katherine Corby
You can’t tell from the background
Harry Brelsford
there. Exactly. Exactly. Well, let’s talk about kind of tap what’s, what’s your story?
Katherine Corby
Well, kind of tap is a company that was formed to fill the payments void in cannabis. I come from the payments industry. And we don’t even think about it anymore. You just pull out a card to pay for something. Well, not in cannabis. Because as long as cannabis is illegal at the federal level, you cannot use a Visa card MasterCard, American Express discover, to pay for cannabis. And that’s push the industry into a very cash based business, which is not convenient, and it’s not safe. And so kind tap is a company that has come out with the first digital credit payment product as well as a p&l product from bank accounts that can be used in the cannabis dispensary and online to pay for purchases with all the convenience of payments the way they work in every other industry. Man.
Harry Brelsford
Question for you because and I don’t know the payments area that well, right? I’m a traditional technology guy, data center servers, that kind of thing. But you are part of the story. You are part of the Kanna tech mix. So I’ll give you that. I’ve heard and read where there’s a lot of actors in the payments area and some concerns that some of the actors are not completely aboveboard any. I’m trying to wrap my head around that.
Katherine Corby
There are I mean, every day you read about somebody who claims a the first legal way to accept credit cards in your dispensary. It is simply not true. They are not being transparent. The only way to legally and in compliance with state and federal and payment network regulations, except payment forms of digital payments. In the dispensary is if they flow outside of the credit and debit card rails. In other words, if the money moves without touching Visa, MasterCard, Amex and discover, if somebody is trying to sell you a solution that says, Oh, this is safe and compliant, you have to ask them, does the consumer pull out a credit or a debit card in my dispensary? And if they do the red flag should be going off? Yeah, we have to round up the purchase of that red flag going off? Where does the money go from the consumer before it reaches you red flag going off? And so you know, if you dig in between, it’s a tremendous problem to everybody. And people just want to kind of close their eyes and say, I’m just gonna do this and hope it works. Well, the consequences can be pretty severe. If you take that approach and end up with a bad actor.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. Yeah, no kidding. I’m assuming maybe you track the progress of the safe Banking Act? Is that something you do? Okay.
Katherine Corby
Absolutely. And banking won’t help retail payments. One.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. So So talk to me, What does safe banking mean to you? And do you think you’ll pass this session? But what what what is safe banking? What does it mean to you?
Katherine Corby
Safe banking means that state banks that are operating legally within their state to serve the cannabis industry will not be arrested by the federal government. Long story short, that’s all that safe banking. Oh, I
Harry Brelsford
thought it was opening it up at the federal level. Okay.
Katherine Corby
No, safe banking simply means that all those banks that have taken the risk, knowing that they’re violating federal law by banking cannabis can do so without concern about the federal government stepping in if they’re operating in compliance with state regulations. Interesting. More everybody wishes it were more but that’s really all it’s going to do. I
Harry Brelsford
think it’s gonna pass this session. I know they’re, they’re pretty busy in DC all the sudden.
Katherine Corby
I don’t see it as a priority in Congress, unfortunately.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope they don’t change my time back. We’ll take one victory at one victory at a time let’s claim the the Daylight Savings problem but well, Kathy, thank you so much for your time. I leave the experience richer than I arrived literally
Katherine Corby
well I really enjoyed speaking with you here all right thank you
