[[{“value”:”
When it comes to cannabis, necessity isn’t just the mother of invention, it’s the driver of a whole new ecosystem.
While traditional e-commerce giants like Amazon and Shopify remain on the sidelines due to federal prohibition, the cannabis industry has forged ahead, developing an infrastructure all its own. Locked out of the mainstream, cannabis operators have created platforms to manage everything from online ordering and payments to compliance and logistics.
One of the companies at the forefront of this innovation is Jane Technologies, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in cannabis today. Co-founded by MIT graduate and Army veteran Socrates Rosenfeld, Jane powers over 35 million legal transactions annually and partners with thousands of dispensaries and brands across 39 U.S. states. From its AI-driven personalization engine to patented universal product catalogs and in-store kiosks, Jane has built a tech infrastructure tailored specifically for the complexities of cannabis retail.
But Jane is only one piece of this broader puzzle. Aeropay, a Chicago-based fintech company, is taking aim at traditional payment rails. With Visa and Mastercard still unavailable to cannabis retailers, Aeropay developed its own bank-to-bank payment system. Their Aerosync technology connects more than 12,000 banks, offering merchants a compliant, cashless, and fee-free alternative to credit cards.
Meanwhile, compliance technology is evolving, too. Metrc, the backbone of the regulatory cannabis supply chain, recently launched a serialized QR code system that enables item-level traceability for finished products from production to checkout. Consumers can see key product details such as COA’s, easily readable cannabinoid and terpene data, and supplemental product information directly sourced from the track and trace system. For brands and retailers, it reduces labeling labor, safeguards product authenticity and improves consumers’ trust in an industry where transparency matters.
The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?
Another innovator redefining cannabis infrastructure is Lit Alerts, a real-time analytics and competitive intelligence platform. Headed up by industry veteran Rick Bashkoff, Lit Alerts aggregates live menu data across markets to deliver insights on pricing, product availability, and sell-through performance. By empowering brands and retailers with on-demand data, the platform helps optimize inventory and streamline reordering. With traditional retail analytics tools largely inaccessible due to federal restrictions, Lit Alerts fills a gap by making cannabis-specific data both transparent and actionable.
Even major multi-state operators like TerrAscend are stepping into the role of tech integrators. Recognizing that traditional ERP systems couldn’t meet the demands of a hyper-regulated, fragmented market, TerrAscend has assembled a modular, cloud-based tech stack using cannabis-native platforms. Combined with automations and data workflows, this strategy allows for plug-and-play adaptability across state lines, a rarity in the often inflexible world of ERP.
The cannabis industry’s technology renaissance is more than a clever workaround but a playbook for future-facing retail. Locked out of traditional platforms, these companies are writing their own rules and building scalable, secure and sophisticated systems from scratch. And in doing so, they’re laying the groundwork not just for cannabis but for any industry grappling with regulatory complexity and digital transformation.
There is a popular saying in business, “find a need and fill it”; the cannabis industry is living this. While in other more established industries, many of these needs have been pored over for generations. Not so in cannabis. Especially with many traditional tech providers still hesitant to enter the space, it seems opportunities abound. What is the next innovation that may pop up? Why wait? Identify a need and figure out how to fill it!
“}]] When it comes to cannabis, necessity isn’t just the mother of invention, it’s the driver of a whole new ecosystem. Read More
