There are a growing number of states that have legalized medical and/or recreational marijuana, and with new laws have come an industry burgeoning with new business opportunities. Despite its consideration in the U.S. as a schedule 1 drug, 33 states have legalized medical marijuana since 1996. 11 of those, plus the District of Columbia, have legalized recreational use for adults (at the time of this post). That number is consistently increasing.

New financial opportunities are beginning to open up for the marijuana industry, which is currently limited to cash transactions or an overseas payment processor if they want to accept electronic payments like credit and debit cards. The Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act was introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this year and passed the House in a landslide on September 25th, 2019. Although it still has to clear the Senate and President before it would become official, its passage would be a game-changer for U.S. retail marijuana businesses.

The SAFE Banking Act would protect financial institutions in legalized states that want to offer basic banking services, such as checking accounts, lines of credit, and payment processing, to state-authorized, regulated marijuana companies—essentially putting them on an equal playing field with the clients banks regularly serve. The Act would provide immunity from any legal penalties to these financial institutions and even extend to other businesses who interact with marijuana companies via electronic transaction (e.g. electricians, carpenters, web designers, etc.).

Even though the SAFE Banking Act is still nascent, many marijuana websites already accept payments online and in-store through an offshore merchant account. If the Act passes, we expect the number of marijuana websites to increase. Delivery companies connected to a website are becoming more and more popular, and age verification is playing an important role in the order payment and fulfillment process.

AgeChecker.net offers advanced location tools that allow you to block purchasing from individual states, cities, counties, or zip codes where your products are illegal. You can set the minimum age for purchasers at your own discretion. Pre-purchase age verification complements signature with ID upon delivery and serves as an efficient chargeback and fraud preventative, in addition to a compliance tool. It’s also a time and cost saver since it ensures your customers are of legal age before you fulfill orders.

Our instant verification method approves roughly 9 out of 10 customers by cross-referencing their order information such as name, address, and date of birth against extensive identity networks we access through our U.S. data partners. If we’re unable to find a match, we prompt the customer to submit a valid, government-issued photo ID which is manually verified by our team. If verified by photo ID, that customer wouldn’t be prompted for an ID again if they order in the future with the same information, which is convenient if you offer subscriptions or memberships for repeat customers. However, if you’d like to require an ID for every purchase as an extra precaution, we offer a setting that will trigger the ID prompt for every transaction.

As regulations change, it’s important to protect your marijuana business from the risks of selling to underage customers or those in unauthorized states. Compliance in this industry has come into major focus as many marijuana businesses also sell vaporizer products and smoking accessories that are age-restricted. Governing bodies are taking extreme measures to regulate these interrelated industries, especially with the increasing prevalence of bootleg products that have been linked to lung-related illnesses, such as black market THC vaporizers.

Many marijuana businesses take on the task of verifying the age of customers in-house, but with that comes a great deal of security risk—not to mention valuable employee hours and the cost of investment in proper training.

AgeChecker.net is designed for the secure, offline storage of personal information, and our manual ID verification process automatically deletes IDs after order authentication. Our technology, backed by highly-trained staff, allows you to outsource the entire age verification process for significant cost savings and the peace of mind knowing you are complying with regulations as they relate to pre-purchase age checks.

Our age verification process is simple and integrated with your website checkout page, making it as efficient and seamless for your customers as possible. AgeChecker.net comes as a plug-in for all major ecommerce platforms and our API is available for custom development. In addition to our customer-facing age verification solution, we also offer a manual entry option if you take orders over the phone or in person. You can demo our software here.

In addition to marijuana dispensaries and retailers, we provide advanced age verification solutions to hemp, CBD, and related industries.