Wayv is taking a big step toward mainstreaming the cannabis industry. Wayv Payments, launching today, is said to be the first digital, compliant payment solution for the cannabis supply chain. From growers to distributors to consumers, this solution should reduce the entire industry’s reliance on stacks of cash by providing a credit-card like transaction to all. More so, Wayv Payments is compliant with California’s stringent laws, allowing companies to redirect capital from compliance management.
This is the latest project from Wayv, which launched its distribution product a few months back. With both systems in place, Wayv is set to be a major force in the cannabis market — a familiar position with founder Keith McCarty, who also founded Eaze.
Wayv is working with Hypur on this project. Wayv Payments gives cannabis companies a line of credit that will allow the businesses to have predictability around payments without paying any payment fees. The solution provides customers with complete transparency around payments. The dashboard enables customers to see incoming and outgoing payments as well as computing taxes and fees.
“Businesses will no longer be beholden to inefficient and unpredictable payments with WAYV as the industry’s facilitator and partner,” Wayv CEO and founder Keith McCarty said in a released statement. “We provide a turnkey solution that is the most efficient, least costly way to exchange capital and products throughout California.”
McCarty says this solution is compliant with all the regulations in the cannabis industry, including generating manifests for transportation.
“It’s required by state law that manifests are generated and submitted to the state,” McCarty said to TechCrunch. “At any given time, you can be pulled over, and there can be an audit on it. And if those things are not being done you’re in jeopardy to lose your license that can cost millions of dollars.”
The system’s API is designed to track a product from seed to sell — meaning, from the moment it’s planted to hitting a retailer’s shelf. McCarty says this process is often currently done by teams of people and can now be done automatically while eliminating mistakes.
This solution is needed to help ease the burden on legal cannabis operators. Without something like this, he says, illegal operators will continue to thrive in the heavily regulated industry. With Wayv, it helps reduce lost payments and products while abiding by the changing regulations.
Right now, this product is only available in California, though the company built it in a way to easily scale it to other markets.
I spoke to McCarty in length about funding a cannabis company and he feels the company needs to dominate a particular market before expanding, and that seems to be his strategy here as well.