Where Pot Entrepreneurs Go When the Banks Just Say No

As the legal markets for marijuana spread, a small credit union is solving a big problem: what to do with all the cash.

The small burgundy satchel bore the hallmarks of rugged craftsmanship: top-grain leather, double stitching on the straps. It was wider at the bottom, sort of like an inverted funnel, and two buckles secured the flap. Babak Behzadzadeh knew exactly how he might use the bag when he saw it hanging in a shop in Playa del Carmen, Mexico: It could be his bank.

Behzadzadeh owns two businesses in Denver. Avicenna Products makes potent marijuana concentrates. Next door, Green Sativa grows marijuana, which it sells directly through its own medical dispensary and store. By last spring, after just 18 months in operation, they were generating $250,000 to $350,000 in monthly sales, all of it in cash. During the workday, the satchel sat on a file cabinet in Behzadzadeh’s small office at Avicenna, stuffed with tens of thousands of dollars that funded the two operations. [Read More @ NY Times]