On Thursday, CanPayannounced the first debit payment solution for the expanding legal marijuana industry has become available to retailers and consumers in the states of Washington, Oregon and Colorado.The service has already launched in 15 retail stores across Washington and Colorado, solving the cash-only problem that troubles the legal cannabis industry.“CanPay partners exclusively with a multi-state network of financial institutions that are banking the cannabis industry under compliance programs meeting strict federal guidelines, ensuring the continued stability and legitimacy of CanPay’s services,” the company explained.Ahead of the service’s debut, Benzinga had the chance to chat with the company’s CEO Dustin Eide.“Our history was in standard-risk payments processing… and [we] realized early on that there might be an opportunity to bring a professional approach to an industry that was highly regulated and appeared to have a lot of payment options that were subject to shutdown,” Eide commenced.

CanPay’s first objective was to find a credit card processing solution – like Visa Inc (NYSE: V) or Mastercard Inc (NYSE: MA) — that was “legitimate and transparent,” he went on to explain.“We wanted to go directly to Visa and MasterCard and find out from them what options would be available.” “We’ve been working with a number of financial institutions, mostly in Oregon, Washington and Colorado, that are openly banking the cannabis industry under compliance programs.So, we presented a solution that involved what we call ‘the close banking fee back loop.’” This ensured the banking institutions were compliant with the law.While Visa and MasterCard thought this was an interesting idea, they passed on it because federal laws still prohibit the use and sale of marijuana, Eide continued.So, CanPay had to build its own debit network based on compliant banking institutions, building a solution as close to Visa-MasterCard-type network as possible.Benzinga: Some people have called you the American Express Company (NYSE: AXP) of marijuana.

If you had to point out similarities with one established, well-known payments processing service like Amex, or Visa, or Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), which would it be and why?Eide: CanPay is most similar to the Amex platform, and the reason being that CanPay is both the issuer of debit accounts to consumers, as well as the processor of payments for retailers.Visa and MasterCard typically use four parties in the transaction: the bank that issues the credit or debit card, the processor, the brand, and the bank that sponsors the processing of that transaction.Amex, on the other hand, is basically a self-contained payment network, where they handle both sides, consumers and retailers.So, that’s what we are most like.Benzinga: How do you differentiate from offering like Tokken, which works with blockchain solutions to ensure secure payments, or others like Greenito and PayQwick?Eide: One of the main things from our standpoint that differentiates us is that CanPay is intended to be only a payment network.

We are not attempting to take on the compliance on behalf of banks or credit unions.We are only working with credit unions that have approved cannabis-banking programs [...] So, only those retailers that have a depository account with one of those approved institutions are allowed to process transactions through CanPay.bitcoin mining vga cardBenzinga: What about funding?ethereum eth etcDo you have capital raise plans in the near future?ethereum eth or etcEide: At this point, we are self-funded, and it’s sufficient for our purposes.bitcoin guidaSo, at this point there is not plan, but we are certainly open to it in the future, as the need arises.bitcoin for cs go skins

Benzinga: Would you say CanPay offers a more effective/efficient solution than BitCoin or other blockchain-based alternatives?Eide: I would say that the advantage for CanPay, in comparison to the blockchain solutions or stored value solutions, where you are pre-funding an account, is that we operate as close to traditional payment networks as is available.krugman bitcoinSo, we can scale as each new state comes online with the regulated market [...] The banks and credit unions that are our partners are excited to bring us out to their cannabis banking clients as a legitimate and transparent option for them, rather than having to hide behind potentially either a hidden merchant account or some other form of payment.1 bitcoin kopenFinally, Eide explained how CanPay works from a consumer perspective.bitcoin otc market

“A consumer signs up for his/her account inside the app, they link their checking account, and then, once they’ve done that, whenever they make a payment in the store, the app generates a unique, single-use, and expiring if not used token that contains no identifiable financial information… No matter what, that token is completely worthless outside of CanPay network, and the moment that it gets used or expires.” The CanPay app is available for both Apple Inc.bitcoin next difficulty increase( from on a mobile device.Note: CanPay Debit has no relation with Canada’s CanPay Payroll Software Online.Image Credits: All images were provided by and used with expressed permission from CanPay.Posted-In: Fintech News Politics Topics Small Business Tech Interview General Best of Benzinga © .Benzinga does not provide investment advice.The digital currency bitcoin -- once used to facilitate online drug deals -- now appears to be enabling people to get around regulations banning online betting.

, a new company from Ireland, offers a "prediction market" that allows people to bet on everything from the U.S.presidential election to the Olympics and the Oscars.And it’s all made possible by bitcoins.Betting of this sort is a legal gray area in the U.S., where the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) decided in a 2012 regulatory order not to allow prediction markets on the grounds that they are "contrary to the public interest." for operating without a license, which forced the site to shut down., which started last July, has the same model as Intrade – except that it accepts only bitcoins, allowing it to receive funds quickly from Americans despite regulations that forbid banks to transfer money to it.'I bet on the Seahawks and won a very modest amount of bitcoins.'- Eli Dourado, a tech policy researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University More On This... Russia bans bitcoins What can you buy with bitcoins?Man versus machine: Table tennis champ to take on ping-pong-playing robot Samsung, ZTE, HTC and more: smartphones galore expected at 2014 Mobile World Congress NASA probe beams Its 1st lunar photos to Earth Bitcoins are virtual currency unconnected to any country, unlike every other currency on earth.

It has no physical form in paper or coin; instead computers “mine” bitcoins by generating new ones at specific durations and depositing them into virtual bank accounts.While the CFTC forbids prediction markets that use cash, it is less certain that it will go after one that uses bitcoins.“There is no way I can answer [that]. are using bitcoins to bet on everything from politics to entertainment.The site’s bettors suggest that the movie “12 Years a Slave” has a 60 percent chance of winning Best Picture; that Republicans have a 50 percent chance of taking the Senate in November; that Hillary Clinton has a 33 percent chance of becoming president in 2016; and that the U.S.has about a 50 percent chance of winning the most medals in the Sochi Winter Games., software developer Flavien Charlon, said he always wanted to create a prediction market, and that bitcoin solved the problem of transferring money.“With all the legal problems and regulations, that made it almost impossible to start a prediction market.

But when I found out about bitcoin I thought: ‘That’s the perfect thing for this.’ Almost right when I discovered bitcoin, I started to work on this project,” he said.Some Americans are happy to have a place to bet online.“I used Predictious to bet on the Super Bowl.He said that such markets would be good for society.“This is valuable information that the public should be free to access… During a political campaign, you may not know how to weight the different polls that come out, or how to interpret the bluster that emerges from each side, but the market price of each candidate on one of these sites represents a summary of what people who are willing to put their own money on the line believe.” That is not how the government sees things.“[Prediction markets can] have an adverse effect on the integrity of elections, for example by creating monetary incentives to vote for particular candidates even when such a vote may be contrary to the voter's political views,” the 2012 CFTC order reads.

Some prediction market experts, noting that the law generally does not specify what currency is used, are wary about whether betting with bitcoins can effectively escape government regulation.“I'm pretty sure that one can't evade gambling or securities or commodities regulations by trading in francs or yen instead of dollars,” said Robin Hanson, an economics professor at George Mason University and the chief scientist at Consensus Point, which designs prediction markets that companies use to reach internal decisions.Hanson is also skeptical about the reach of the new prediction market.“You'd want the cash used to be something easily available to many potential users,” he said.“At the moment, bitcoin doesn't look so good on that.” “Once regulators decide the trades are illegal they have lots of things they can do to shut it down.Witness Silk Road,” Hanson added, referring to the online bitcoin-only drug market that survived anonymously for several years until the FBI identified the creator.