A point-of-sale (POS) system is arguably the most important part of any dispensary’s technology stack. Being able to take payments from customers and efficiently manage orders and inventory are the main operations for retailers, after all.

With most major retail service providers still skirting the cannabis industry, an in-house market has grown to answer the particular needs that dispensaries have. From compliance, payments, and integrations with other platforms, these service providers are building the tech infrastructure supporting the cannabis industry. But each market and operator have their quirks to handle, and not all services in the market may ultimately be the right fit.

With that in mind, here are Cannabis Business Executive’s top POS service providers for retail operators big and small across the U.S. market (and sometimes beyond).

The One With Integrated Debit Payments: POSaBIT

POSaBIT started as offering bitcoin payments for cannabis retailers but has since evolved to become a debit payment and POS platform. By offering debit payments, POSaBIT customers can expect bigger basket sizes as retail customers have a non-cash option that isn’t a credit card.

That payments platform does come at a price: retailers can expect to pay at least $200 per month per terminal, and POSaBIT’s dedicated hardware makes existing systems obsolete if switching over from a different platform. Then there’s a 3.5% transaction fee and a non-cash convenience fee. However, as founder and CEO Ryan Hamlin told CBE in November, “Cash isn’t free at all. By the time a cannabis store processes that cash, meaning they count it, they account for any sort of theft or miscounting of the product, they have an armored car service picking up the cash, they have their bank fees… all in … it’s actually like 6% to 9%,” he said.

POSaBIT also offers integrations with many of the cannabis industry’s popular software platforms, including springbig, Alpine IQ, Headset, Leafly, Dutchie, Jane, and Weedmaps. Its seemingly strong financial position also bodes well for the company’s longevity ($11 million raised to date vs. $37 million in projected revenue in 2022 alone).

The One With All the Features: Flowhub

With the launch of its new Maui platform this past November, Flowhub has positioned itself as the one-stop retail software shop that still offers one of the largest integration partner lists in the industry. Flowhub is a POS platform, but also offers payments, customer relation management, compliance, and analytics.

Enterprise operations, especially, would seem to be able to get the most from Flowhub’s platforms and integrations, and CEO Kyle Sherman told CBE as much in October: “Our platform is built for interstate commerce. So when interstate commerce opens up, we can flip a switch and you can transfer products among all stores across the entire supply chain,” he said.

That said, the company can cater to almost any retailer’s needs with its custom pricing based on transaction volume, sales, and market. Social equity licensees also can benefit from the company’s social equity discount pricing.

The One Made Simple: Cova

Cova’s founder and CEO Gary Cohen is trying to replicate Apple’s formula in building a POS and compliance platform for cannabis retailers. Doing that has meant focusing on building a simple platform that is intuitive to use. 

Getting into the compliance game is a lot of work, and Cova is taking a slow approach to market rollouts, with the company only operating in 15 states. That said, its platform has 55% of the Canadian market, showing its promise as it expands in the United States.

Cova’s monthly fee starts at $349. The tool operates on an Android platform, which also offers the ability for offline transactions in the case of a power or internet outage temporarily knocking out cloud service. “[Because] the tablet has the latest instance of the inventory, you could do transactions,” Cohen explained to CBE in October.

Cova also has built goodwill in the market through its founder’s non-promotional, educational webinars focused on startups. With the company growing despite market turbulence and the majority of new hires going to product development teams, Cova, like most of the others on this list, seems well-positioned for longevity.

The One For Delivery: BLAZE

Retailers with a larger delivery footprint, or pure delivery services, can consider BLAZE as a top option for their needs, as the platform is built by former cannabis delivery business operators. A POS system with delivery in mind, BLAZE allows customers to browse nearby driver inventory from a delivery operator’s menu for rapid, on-demand service while streamlining management on the back end. 

As for the in-store experience, BLAZE comes with dedicated hardware, including receipt printers, and the in-store platform only functions on iOS–but the delivery app functions across both iOS and Android devices.

BLAZE also offers an E-commerce platform, payments, analytic insights, CRM features, and multi-location management, as well as training features on the software through BLAZE University. The company also offers vertical integration options with its BLAZE Grow and BLAZE Distro platforms.

The company’s footprint is still growing (1,400 dispensaries across 14 states and eight provinces), and it is looking to raise another round of funding in the second half of 2023 when markets might be more favorable to be in a position to acquire more distressed assets in the future.

The One Building to Scale: Treez

Treez’s pitch as the cannabis industry’s “Integration Hub” is a daring one. Pulling it off will be difficult, but this won’t be the company’s first attempt at building an all-in-one tech stack, and Treez is taking the lessons it learned in its first year of operation to heart.

The platform is centered on POS, with everything else built into the platform supporting that core function. Treez wants every integration into the platform to be as easy as possible to support retail customers. The company’s acquisition and integration of payment platform Swifter in early November was both a product expansion and a use case for integrations.

Another platform on this list that offers custom pricing, Treez services retailers of all sizes, but, as Yang told CBE in November, is especially looking for partners who have “growth aspirations, that [have] multi-location, multi-state aspirations, a lot of volume aspirations, or just trying to get the foundations right from the start.”