HP's retail tech integrated into US startup Flowhub's platform for legalised marijuana market

A US software startup as integrated its retail management platform with HP's point-of-sales system to help Americans quickly set up their own marijuana dispensary.

Based in Denver, Colorado, Flowhub's platform combines its own business management and transactional process tools with the new HP ElitePOS hardware.

The system is aimed at keeping new dispensaries compliant with state laws and regulations and up to date with reporting rules for the booming marijuana industry in the US.

A HP spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement: "Retailers across a wide range of industries use our hardware in their store operations. Our retail solutions are widely available and used by all sorts of customers as they see fit to meet their business need.”

The HP ElitePOS comes with Windows 10 IoT Enterprise Edition, a 14-inch touchscreen, Intel i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, bundled with Flowhub's retail and compliance software.

The company bundles HP's hardware with printers and other POS accessories with four different versions for different US states where marijuana dispensaries are legal.

According to Forbes, the global cannabis market is expected to be worth US$31.4 billion by 2021, leading to numerous technology startups in the US attempting to jump in with their own solutions.

However, HP isn't the first major technology company to dip its toes into the legalised marijuana market. Microsoft partnered with Los Angeles startup Kind in June 2016 to run its software in Microsoft's Azure Government cloud.