Unlike chocolate and peanut butter, so far cannabis businesses and the U.S. financial services industry — banks, payments, insurance, retirement services, etc. — haven’t been better together. For years, they have been hesitant to interact. From the cannabis perspective, financial services (FS) haven’t provided access to competitively priced loans, lines of credit, cash management, and other services essential to business management and growth. From the financial services’ perspective, the lack of industry regulation and cash-only business models make cannabis-related businesses (CRBs) high risk, as are other emerging industries. However, with nationwide cannabis legalization on the horizon, there is an opportunity for profitable change.
A new alliance by the National Association of Cannabis Businesses (NACB) and Emerging Markets Coalition (EMC) is leveraging this opportunity by forging trusted relationships between the two…