WP Dispensary is an open source project at it’s core, and within the spirit of the open source community that it’s been built on, I would like to openly talk about some of the recent changes on the WPD website.

On January 4th, I was contacted by Stripe, the credit card processing company that WP Dispensary was using at the time.

The email let me know that as of January 18th the account would no longer be supported:

“While we hate to give you anything less than a great experience, it does seem that your business is in violation of the Stripe Services Agreement, section A.7.b (“Prohibited Businesses and Activities”). Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for marijuana dispensaries and related businesses as mentioned here: https://stripe.com/prohibited-businesses.

These regulations are firm, so we sadly have no flexibility with them. That said, we understand that there may be some work involved with moving your business away from Stripe, and we’re happy to help out with this process by giving you 14 days to switch to a new provider.”

After some discussion, I found out it was because WP Dispensary is a “marijuana related” business, and couldn’t be supported, even though it is only a software company.

The extension of time to find a new provider that was given by Stripe allowed for minimal downtime throughout the entire process, which I appreciated.

Although it didn’t do much to the level of stress it put me under to find another solution.

I received a couple denials from other large credit card payment processing companies, which led me to voice my frustrations on my personal Twitter account.

After my mini-rant, I was contacted by a Matthew Lapierre, a representative from BlueSnap who offered to look into helping get WP Dispensary set up with their service.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve worked with BlueSnap and they are now WPD’s new payment processor for all purchases made through the www.wpdispensary.com domain.

During the switch, there was an uptick in support requests due to our cart being down for the last 9-10 days, but I’m happy to say our cart and checkout process is in 100% full working order.

With this move from one payment processor to another, our website’s eCommerce cart solution has also changed.

We previously used the Easy Digital Downloads plugin, which in amazing solution for anybody who wants to offer downloadable content through their website.

BlueSnap provides a WooCommerce plugin that connects your BlueSnap account to your WooCommerce store, which made the setup process fairly easy.

By contrast, if I wanted to build our own solution to connect BlueSnap to Easy Digital Downloads, it would have taken at least a month to develop and thoroughly test.

My goal was to get the WP Dispensary website back in working order in the quickest amount of time, since there are add-on’s being prepped for release, along with updates to our current extensions.

And that’s what I did.

What this means for you

Because we now have a solid solution for credit card processing, time can be spent building out the next add-on’s in the pipeline, along with some much needed updates to our current extensions.

Other than our business operations flowing fluidly moving forward, the only thing that has changed for our users is an increase in everything you deserve:

An online menu software solution for your cannabis business, with top shelf support and seamless user experience for you & your patients.

With this portion of WPD’s business history history, let’s talk about what we’re working on next.

What’s next

Let’s end this by promoting some of the releases we have planned over the next couple of weeks.

First, there’s a new add-on being released for your gear that will add in a new Gear Menu Type that will function like Flowers, Edibles, etc.

It’s one of the biggest feature requests, and we’re happy to be able to provide the added functionality to you – free of charge!

The Gear add-on will allow dispensaries to add cartridges, clothing, bongs/pipes, rolling papers and more to their menu.

After the final round of code work, the plugin will be submitted to the official WordPress plugin directory.

We’ll publish a new blog post when it’s released, so sign up for our newsletter to be notified!

There’s also a new Connection add-on being built that will connect your WP Dispensary menu to one of the biggest Point of Sale software solutions in the cannabis industry.

The add-on will give your website instant-updates based on what your shop is selling, and all without you needing to touch a thing!

I’m excited about this add-on, and while I want to talk more about it right now, the name of the company will be released when the add-on is released.

If I’ve learned anything over the last couple years is that big things take time and patience!

In the meantime, check out our current extensions and find out how WP Dispensary can get your cannabis business website setup.