When Farid Harrison and his team set out to build Velvet Cannabis, they wanted to challenge some of the conventions of cannabis retail.

The vision was a dispensary that felt less like a dispensary and more like a modern retail experience. That meant open spaces, natural light, a welcoming environment, and a strong emphasis on customer service.

“When we first got into the cannabis industry, we really wanted to create retail experiences that felt like a normal retail shopping experience,” said Harrison, Founder and CEO of Velvet Cannabis. “No holding tanks for ID check, no dungeonous feel to the space, lots of natural light and, most importantly, world-class customer experiences.”

But when Harrison talks about what really differentiates Velvet, the answer has little to do with the stores themselves.

“OUR PEOPLE!!!”

“This is ultimately a customer engaging experience, and we believe it starts with our people the minute a customer pulls into our parking lot.”

That philosophy has shaped everything from Velvet’s approach to hiring to the experience customers have at checkout. Over time, it also changed the way Harrison thought about payments.

Payments Were a Blind Spot. Then That Changed.

Like many cannabis retailers, Velvet’s payment journey involved a mix of solutions. The company moved between PIN-based debit, cashless ATM, and other payment methods as the cannabis payments landscape evolved.

At the time, Harrison admits payments were one part of the business he simply didn’t understand well enough.

“To be honest, we were incredibly uneducated and naive and had no idea where all the money was going,” he said. “We trusted our POS solution and that was a huge mistake.”

His perspective began to change after meeting PayRio Founder and CEO Aubrey Amatelli.

Instead of simply presenting Velvet with another payment product, Amatelli spent time walking Harrison through how cannabis payments worked, where the money moved, and what operators should understand before selecting a provider.

Harrison embraced it.

“Aubrey forced me to get educated on payments, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done since getting into this industry.”

That education became the foundation of the relationship between Velvet and PayRio.

“Aubrey spent so much time explaining it all to me, and I was like a sponge. I wanted to know everything,” Harrison said. “Looking back, it’s wild that I didn’t learn more before meeting Aubrey and engaging with PayRio.”

For cannabis operators, his experience highlights something that can easily get overlooked. Payments are not simply another feature inside a POS system. They directly affect revenue, cash flow, employees, and the customer experience. Operators should understand how their payment solution works, what they are paying for, and what happens when something goes wrong.

A Better Checkout Experience Had an Unexpected Impact

After Velvet implemented PayRio’s Digital Debit solution, the terminals quickly became part of the everyday experience inside its stores.

How quickly?

“Our team loves PayRio,” Harrison said. “I joke that if I took the PayRio terminals off our counters, I would have complete anarchy.”

Part of that enthusiasm comes from something that initially seems separate from payment processing: employee compensation.

Digital tipping made it easier for customers to recognize the budtenders serving them without needing cash in their pockets. For a retailer already built around customer service, the impact was significant.

“Our customers love our employees and they are very generous with tipping, but digital tipping has normalized that process and it makes it easy for the customer,” Harrison said.

Harrison estimates that budtender compensation has increased by more than 30% since Velvet began using PayRio. Previous data shared by Velvet provides an even clearer look at the impact: its biweekly tip pool increased from approximately $8,000 to $14,000, weekly tips per budtender increased approximately 63%, and tipping revenue grew 67% year over year.

Those numbers are meaningful, but Harrison’s perspective on them may be even more telling.

“Digital tipping has completely changed how we look at employee compensation.”

For Velvet, payment technology was no longer only about giving customers an alternative to cash. It had become another way to support the people responsible for delivering the experience the company had built its reputation around.

It’s a connection we’ve explored more broadly in How Much to Tip a Budtender and How Digital Payments Are Changing It, but Velvet provides a real-world example of what that impact can look like.

When the Technology Matters, the People Behind It Matter Too

The relationship was tested in a very different way during MJBizCon.

Harrison was having dinner with his business partner and COO after attending a PayRio event when he received a call: Velvet’s payment processing was down as part of a broader outage.

For a cannabis retailer, an unexpected payment disruption can quickly become much more than a technical inconvenience. Customers still need to pay, employees need answers, and stores need to keep operating.

Harrison called Amatelli.

She answered.

By the time Harrison was flying home the following day, Velvet was back up and running.

When asked to describe PayRio’s communication and support, Harrison had one word:

“EXCEPTIONAL!!!”

The experience reinforced something that has become increasingly important to him. Reliability isn’t only about technology never experiencing a problem. Payment systems can encounter disruptions. What matters is whether an operator knows what is happening, can reach someone when it matters, and has a partner actively working toward a solution.

That same philosophy sits behind our approach to payment redundancy in cannabis.

For Harrison, however, there is an even simpler way to think about it.

“Zero Percent of Zero Is Zero”

Ask Harrison what he would tell another cannabis operator evaluating payment providers, and his first piece of advice is the same lesson he learned himself:

“Get educated!!!”

He sees a cannabis payments market filled with promotional offers, rebates, revenue shares, and incentives. Those numbers can understandably attract an operator’s attention. But Harrison believes they can also distract from a much more important question.

Does the solution work, and is it right for the customer?

“I like to say that zero percent of zero is ZERO!!!” Harrison said. “So if your payment solution is down all the time, then it doesn’t matter how big of a rebate you are getting because you aren’t processing, so you aren’t getting ANY rebate.”

It’s difficult to summarize Velvet’s payment journey better than that.

Pricing matters. Revenue sharing matters. Processing costs matter. But a payment solution ultimately has to work for the business and the people using it.

That includes the customer standing at the register. It includes the budtender relying on tips. It includes the operator trying to understand where the money is going. And when something goes wrong, it includes having someone on the other end of the phone.

As Velvet continues to grow, Harrison expects payment technology to keep changing alongside the regulatory environment. Until traditional payment options become more widely available to cannabis businesses, he believes alternative solutions will have to continue evolving, and operators will need to evolve with them.

But his underlying priorities haven’t changed much from the ones that shaped Velvet in the beginning.

Put people first. Create a better customer experience. And understand the systems your business depends on.

That is ultimately what brought Velvet and PayRio together.

“PayRio has been unbelievable, and there is true heart behind the people that make the company go,” Harrison said. “Truly a rare find in this chaotic industry. WE APPRECIATE YOU ALL!!!”

For a company that believes its own success starts with its people, it seems fitting that Harrison describes its payment partnership in much the same way.