The countdown to launch the largest new market for recreational sales in the cannabis industry is almost here and the state of California still doesn’t have an answer to the million dollar question – “How do we bank the cannabis industry?” Without access to banks, this industry struggles with safety – transporting large amounts of […]
Banking, Finance & Real Estate
Industry, Legislators: Mongrel word ‘Marijuana’ No More – Let’s Call It ‘Cannabis’
There is a slowly rising respect coming into the cannabis industry from key business sectors. Maybe it’s because of the estimated half billion dollars in state tax revenue that the industry is expected to generate this year, according to Forbes magazine. Maybe it’s in D.C., where more bills for legalizing cannabis have been seeing co-sponsors […]
California Ponders Idea of a Public Bank to Serve the Cannabis Industry
With recreational marijuana sales set to become legal in California next year and most banks unwilling to open accounts for cannabis companies, pot entrepreneurs are desperate to figure out what to do with their piles of cash. Now, some want the state or cities to get involved. Over the last year, there has been increasing […]
Cannabis is What America Needs
To my fellow Americans: We have a severe crisis in America today. We’re divided politically on many issues, we have a legal drug epidemic – the abuse of prescription opioids – that is spreading rampantly across the United States. We are losing our rights and privileges to affordable health care. And the gap between rich and poor is becoming larger […]
What You Need to Know To Protect Your Cannabis-Related Business From B2B Credit Fraud
As the largest majority of financial transactions in the cannabis market are still in cash, B2B credit fraud may not be on the top of the list of subjects you want to learn about. But as the cannabis market evolves and looks more like corporate America, issues like B2B credit fraud will start to become […]
PNC Bank Cancels Another Marijuana Advocacy Group’s Bank Account
Marijuana legalization advocate Cher Neufer queued up at a Cincinnati post office in mid-June expecting to mail a t-shirt to a donor. Instead, she was met with the message every shopper dreads: card denied. A few phone calls later, Neufer discovered that PNC had closed the account for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana’s Ohio branch […]
FinCEN: Steady Upward Trend of More Commercial Banks Working With Cannabis Businesses
The cannabis banking conundrum is getting better.. but still has a long way to go. That is the finding of recently released information by the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that charted cannabis banking activity from January, 2014 to March, 2017. The FinCEN report showed that depository institutions that provided banking services to marijuana-related businesses […]
Banks Already Work in the Cannabis Industry – They Just Don’t Know It
Banks have mostly chosen to stay on the sidelines of the cannabis rush, deterred by the regulatory uncertainty around an industry that is still illegal at the federal level and concerns that the Trump administration seems opposed to legalization efforts. But it may be a bigger challenge than financial institutions realize to keep their hands […]
Pot Credit Union Can Again Seek KC Fed Account
A Colorado credit union will get another shot in its quest to provide banking services to the state’s legal marijuana industry as the Tenth Circuit on Tuesday opened the door for the financial institution to reapply for a master account at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. A Tenth Circuit panel vacated a Colorado […]
California Seen as a Force for Solving Banking Business Dilemma
One of the most pressing issues of the cannabis industry continues to be banking. Just Tuesday, June 20, the Marijuana Policy Project, a cannabis advocacy and lobbying organization, announced that they were going to be shut down by PNC bank. This was an organization with a 22 year line of business with PNC, and some […]
