After more than a decade in merchant services at J.P. Morgan, Aubrey Amatelli founded PayRio. The payments provider was made exclusively for cannabis and alternative medicine businesses. Today, PayRio provides payment solutions to hundreds of dispensaries across 28 states, helping independent shops, MSOs, and everyone in between process payments reliably.
PufCreativ recently sat down with PayRio’s CEO to discuss the customer journey marketers rarely discuss, namely the checkout.
PufCreativ: You’ve shared data showing dispensaries that accept cards see basket sizes go up 20 to 34 percent. From a marketing standpoint, what does that mean for how operators should be thinking about their promotions, loyalty programs, and upsell strategy?
Aubrey Amatelli: This is actually our sweet spot because we get to watch it happen in real time.
We’ve done case studies on businesses that went from cash to debit, and then later from debit to credit. Every time we remove friction from the payment experience, customers spend more. It’s not because they’re trying to overspend. They’re simply no longer limited by whatever cash they happened to bring with them.
That’s a huge opportunity for retailers. Suddenly promotions become more effective, loyalty programs become more valuable, and budtenders have more freedom to recommend that extra pre-roll or edible because the customer isn’t thinking, “I’d love to, but I only have fifty dollars in my wallet.”
People spend so much time talking about getting customers through the door, but once they’re there, the payment experience plays a much bigger role in revenue than most operators realize.
Does removing payment friction actually change consumer behavior beyond just convenience?
Absolutely, and I think that’s where a lot of people underestimate payments.
Consumers don’t separate the payment experience from the shopping experience. They see it as one experience.
Everywhere else in their lives they tap their card, use Apple Pay, pull out their phone… It’s second nature. When they walk into a dispensary and suddenly have to find an ATM or navigate a complicated workaround, you’ve interrupted that experience.
Our goal has always been to normalize payments in cannabis. We want customers to shop the same way they shop everywhere else. The easier checkout becomes, the better the overall experience, the better your conversion rates, and ultimately the more likely customers are to come back.
A lot of cannabis marketing is built around driving traffic. But if the checkout experience is broken or creates friction, does any of that traffic actually convert the way it should?
No, and that’s the frustrating part. Operators spend months building a brand, investing in SEO, running promotions, designing beautiful stores…all to get people through the front door. Then the last step of the customer journey becomes the hardest part.
Cannabis businesses already deal with enough obstacles. Our philosophy has always been, “Let’s not make payments one of them.” Marketing gets people interested, but payments help complete the experience.
What do you see operators getting wrong at that last step of the process?
Honestly, I think too many operators treat payments like checking a box.
They’ll spend months building their brand, designing an incredible store, curating products, investing in marketing… and then payments become the last thing they think about.
A lot of businesses come to us after signing up with whoever approved them the fastest. Usually it’s a processor that doesn’t actually understand cannabis or other regulated industries. Everything works fine in the beginning, but once the business starts growing, they’re suddenly scrambling because their account gets shut down or they hit limitations they never knew existed.
You’ve worked with dispensaries at every stage, from two-location mom-and-pops to 60-plus location MSOs. What separates operators who scale well from ones who hit a ceiling? How much of that comes down to infrastructure decisions?
Infrastructure is a huge part of it. One thing I learned at JPMorgan is that every business deserves to be treated like it’s important, whether it’s one location or one hundred. We built PayRio around that same philosophy.
Four years ago, we were the small business trying to figure it out ourselves, so we understand those growing pains.
The operators who scale successfully usually think a little further ahead. They don’t just ask, “What’s the cheapest payment solution?” They ask, “Who’s going to be able to support us when we double or triple in size?”
Payments are the lifeblood of your revenue. If they’re unreliable, growth gets really difficult. Having the right partners in your corner makes all the difference.
PufCreativ and PayRio are both in the operator’s corner but working on different sides of the equation. What do you think about co-marketing in cannabis, and what makes that kind of collaboration useful to the businesses we’re both trying to serve?
I actually think it’s a really natural partnership. PufCreativ helps operators attract customers. We help them complete the transaction. You really need both.
You can build an amazing website, invest in SEO, have a great brand, and execute a fantastic marketing strategy, but if customers run into friction when they’re ready to pay, you’ve created a bottleneck at the most important part of the journey.
On the flip side, the best payment solution in the world doesn’t help if no one knows your business exists.
The strongest operators are the ones who surround themselves with partners that complement each other. Everyone brings something different to the table, but we’re all working toward the same goal: helping the operator succeed.
There’s a lot of pressure on cannabis brands right now to grow fast. What’s your take on when a dispensary is actually ready to invest heavily in marketing versus when they need to fix something foundational first?
I’m always a fan of investing in growth, but you have to make sure your foundation is built first. If your payments aren’t reliable, your banking relationships aren’t solid, or your website isn’t converting, marketing is only going to expose those problems faster.
Once growth starts, it can happen quickly. You don’t want to spend all this time and money driving people to your business only to create friction when they’re actually ready to buy.
That’s why we spend so much time talking about infrastructure. The right payment partners, redundancy, and scalable solutions might not be the exciting part of growing a business, but they’re what allow you to keep growing without constantly putting out fires.
You’ve predicted ecommerce could eventually represent 80% of cannabis sales. What has to happen first?
We’re at a really interesting point in the industry because, for the first time, we’re having serious conversations around rescheduling. If that continues moving forward, especially on the medical side, I think it has the potential to completely reshape the payments landscape.
The reason we’re excited is because we’ve been preparing for that future for years. We’ve spent years building banking relationships, supporting hemp and CBD businesses, and learning how to navigate these highly regulated markets because we’ve always believed payment normalization was coming.
You’ve been open about walking away from a seven-figure partnership because it didn’t feel right. What does a vendor or partner relationship need to look like for it to genuinely serve the operator?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as a founder is to trust my intuition.
Early on, it’s easy to chase the biggest opportunity or the partnership that looks incredible on paper. I definitely made some of those mistakes. Looking back, every partnership I’ve walked away from started with the same feeling. Something just didn’t sit right. Every time I ignored that feeling because I was focused on the opportunity, I ended up wishing I had trusted myself sooner.
Today, I look at partnerships very differently. I want to work with people who genuinely care about the businesses we’re serving, who share our values, and who are focused on building something long term. Those are the partnerships that create the best outcomes, not just for us, but for our customers too.
Bringing It All Together: Marketing Meets Payments
Ready to strengthen both sides of your customer journey? Reach out to PufCreativ to talk marketing strategy, and ask us about our partnership with PayRio for payment infrastructure built for cannabis. Services and eligibility vary by location and business type.
