Cash

Alt Thirty Six is making its digital payment platform focused on the cannabis industry available to the wholesale network of CannTrade, a partnership the companies say will eliminate the need for using cash.

Merchants are interested in new payments technology, but there's still an understanding gap that keeps cash a viable option.

Mastercard's Cardless ATM service, developed with Diebold Nixdorf, resembles the technology many banks have adopted in the last few years — but Mastercard's offering sheds the limitation of being tied to a specific bank's ATMs.

Innovations such as automated smart safes can make it easier to track the flow of paper money, reducing theft risk, and cut down on the number of armored truck pickups, according to Sam Bosch, president and CEO of Peregrin Financial Technologies.

It's vital to be in touch with consumer shopping and payment tastes for individual retail categories and consumer groups. That may or may not include removing cash and human interaction, according to Andrew Wind, principal product manager at Worldpay.

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are adapting to digital payments technology at slower speeds and for different reasons than larger enterprises. Cash and checks still account for almost half of all SMB payments, and SMBs have lagged behind other merchants in the U.S. shift to EMV technology.

Millennials view the ATM as central to how they manage their money and go about their daily lives, writes Yonas Marcos, president and CEO of Star Financial Services.

Bluestone Lane, an Australian-style café and coffee shop chain in the U.S., has been well-served by its move to cashless payments in October 2016. But even the most well-planned transition can encounter problems if customers aren't expecting it.

As marijuana legalization spreads throughout the U.S. and the world, companies in the cannabis market must navigate a delicate tangle of new and old regulations. And many payment providers are unwilling to risk working with dispensaries, leading to some inventive workarounds.

Web and mobile bill payment provider Doxo is taking its first step into cash payment options by partnering with Coinstar to enable cash bill payment at thousands of coin-counting kiosks in retail locations.