TreezPay
A Loyalty-Driven Cashless Payment Experience
Context
What is Treez?
Treez is a cannabis retail technology provider offering point-of-sale systems, payment infrastructure, and analytics tools for dispensaries.
And what is TreezPay?
TreezPay is one of the Treez’s Products, enables dispensaries to process cashless transactions through methods like ACH, CATM, and integrated card payments.
The Problem
Cannabis retail in the United States operates under complex federal regulations.
Because of this, many transactions still happen using physical cash.
TreezPay enables dispensaries to offer cashless alternatives, but customer adoption is low.
Most customers simply pay with cash. Not because alternatives don’t exist, but because there is little incentive to use them.
The Current Experience
Imagine a typical dispensary visit…
A customer walks into the store, selects products, and reaches the checkout counter.
At this point the budtender becomes the interface for payment decisions.
The budtender may ask:
“Would you like to pay with TreezPay?”
If the customer hasn’t used it before, the budtender must explain:
- What TreezPay is?
- How to register?
- How the payment works?
- If there’s any points/rewards they want to redeem
This process often takes time, especially in busy stores. As a result, customers frequently choose the fastest option:
cash.
The Real Problem
Cashless payment exists in the ecosystem, but there‘s nothing that makes customers want to use it.
We needed to understand why Cash remains the Default?
Key Pain Points~
From the customer’s perspective:
- Rewards are invisible before until informed by budtender
- There is no way to track earning progress
- Payment choice feels irrelevant
From the dispensary’s perspective:
- Budtenders must explain TreezPay to the new users
- Onboarding slows down checkout
- Loyalty opportunities could be missed
Key Insights
We realized we needed to have clear value proposition, as without a visible incentive, cashless payment feels like extra effort to a customer.
The Opportunity
Instead of relying only on budtenders to drive adoption, Treez could introduce a consumer-facing experience that encourages users to adopt TreezPay.
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The key question became:
How might we make TreezPay, a payment method that customers actively choose instead of something budtenders must convince them to use?
Defining the design Principles
To address these insights, TreezPay needed to evolve from a backend payment infrastructure into a consumer-facing payment experience.
The experience would revolve around three core principles.
- Make value visible early
Customers should understand the benefit of using TreezPay before reaching checkout. - Reduce onboarding friction
Signing up and using TreezPay should feel effortless during a store visit. - Create a reward loop
Customers should clearly see the connection between spending and rewards.
Desk Research
Key insights from desk research
How this shaped design decisions
Here’s the final design prototype
