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A serial tech entrepreneur is trying to create an Amazon-like platform for legal marijuana

CNBC

Customers — especially millennials— don’t like using cash, and cash sitting in a back office isn’t secure. However, major banks and credit card companies still won’t touch cannabis. It remains a Schedule I drug, illegal at the federal level. This creates a gap that Keith McCarty hopes to cash in on.

McCarty is CEO of Wayv (pronounced wave). The year-old company provides an Amazon-like platform for legal marijuana retailers in California to do online sales and next day delivery.

Now he’s introducing Wayv Payments — a digital B2B payment system that allows retailers, growers, manufacturers and distributors to pay each other in a timely manner and without cash. McCarty calls it the first time a marijuana marketplace and logistics platform has been combined with a payment system.

Wayv is using fintech created by an Arizona company called Hypur, which has spent an estimated $30 million to develop digital payment technology for the cannabis industry.

“We’re projecting that 60-70% of all cannabis and CBD related transactions will either run through one of our institutions or across our payment network by the end of 2020,”  said Tyler Beuerlein, a former professional baseball player who is now Hypur’s chief revenue officer.

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