Cannabis Is Moving Away from Cash – Just Not All at Once

New data from Green Check reveals two different payment stories unfolding across retail and wholesale cannabis channels.

For years, cash has been the defining feature of the cannabis transaction. Not by preference, but by necessity. Federal banking restrictions left most operators with few alternatives, turning dispensaries into cash-heavy businesses and wholesale deals into handshake-and-envelope affairs. It was inefficient, it was risky, and nearly everyone in the industry accepted it as an immovable fact of life.

The data says that’s changing.

Green Check’s analysis of retail and wholesale payment activity across 2024 and 2025 shows the cannabis industry in the early stages of genuine financial normalization. Cash still dominates. But it’s losing ground, and the speed at which it’s doing so depends heavily on which side of the supply chain you’re looking at.

At the Dispensary Counter: A Slow, Steady Shift

Retail cannabis remains a cash-first business. Of the roughly $18.5 billion in retail transactions analyzed, cash accounted for 65% of all sales. That’s not surprising. Consumer payment habits are sticky, and for many shoppers, particularly in markets where stigma still lingers, cash feels like the safer, more private option.

But the direction of travel is clear.

In 2024, cash represented nearly 68% of average daily retail sales. By 2025, that figure had dropped to under 63%. Debit card usage moved in the opposite direction, climbing from 25% to over 27% of daily volume over the same period. These may look like modest numbers, but in a $18-billion channel, a few percentage points represent hundreds of millions of dollars rotating out of cash and into electronic payment rails.

What’s driving it? Availability, mostly. As more dispensaries gain access to compliant payment solutions, customers use them. Consumers aren’t philosophically attached to cash, they simply default to it when there’s no other option. Give them a card reader or mobile app that works, and many will use it.

The data also reveals something useful about the reliability of those systems. The largest single-day dips in debit activity across the period were no greater than 10%, suggesting that processor disruptions are isolated rather than systemic.

In the Wholesale Channel: Something More Fundamental

If the retail picture is a gradual evolution, what’s happening in wholesale looks more like a structural break.

Green Check’s analysis of wholesale payment activity shows cash collapsing as a share of the payment mix while ACH moves to take its place. In 2024, cash accounted for nearly 48% of average daily wholesale volume. By 2025, that figure had fallen to just over 17%. Over the same period, ACH’s share nearly doubled, rising from 16% to nearly 31%.

Check payments also declined, dropping from about 23% to 16% of wholesale volume, a quieter but consistent signal that the industry is moving away from paper-based instruments entirely.

This isn’t a story about consumer preference like it is in Retail. It’s a story about infrastructure. Wholesale operators are businesses, and businesses move money the way their banks allow them to. For much of cannabis’s commercial history, that meant cash, because most banks simply wouldn’t touch the industry.

That’s shifting. As more financial institutions develop compliant cannabis banking programs, wholesale operators continue to gain access to ACH services and when they do, they’re adopting them fast. The 2024-to-2025 transition represents the clearest evidence yet that the industry isn’t just tolerating better financial infrastructure. It’s been waiting for it.

What This Means for the Industry

Two channels, two speeds, one direction.

Retail cannabis is modernizing gradually, pulled forward by consumer demand for electronic payment options and by the slow but real expansion of compliant point-of-sale solutions. Cash will remain a meaningful part of the retail mix for years to come but its dominance is eroding, and there’s no structural reason to expect that trend to reverse.

Wholesale cannabis is moving faster, and the data suggests the pace could accelerate. The ACH adoption curve isn’t driven by incremental change, it’s driven by access. When a wholesaler opens a banking relationship that includes ACH, wire or bill pay capabilities, or even the ability to invoice and collect payments electronically, they appear to shift quickly and decisively. The bottleneck isn’t willingness. It’s availability.

Together, these trends point toward an industry that is, piece by piece, joining the financial mainstream. Not all at once. Not without friction. But with enough momentum that the question is no longer *whether* cannabis becomes a normally banked industry, it’s how quickly

Green Check works with financial institutions and cannabis businesses to enable compliant banking across the cannabis industry. The data in this analysis reflects payment activity across Green Check’s network for the 2024–2025 period.