New Companies Help Marijuana Businesses Deal With Money

Several new companies have started to help marijuana businesses deal with their cash, according to The New York Times. Most banks will not open accounts for marijuana businesses, and Visa and MasterCard will not process transactions for dispensaries.

Dispensaries in Colorado, where recreational marijuana is legal, find they cannot open bank accounts. They have to deal with an influx of cash and have nowhere to put it.

One Colorado start-up, Tokken, is headed by Lamine Zarrad, who formerly was a bank examiner at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the Treasury Department.

The company plans to use an electronic payment system that will not rely on credit card companies or debit networks. It will use an electronic money transfer system called the Automated Clearinghouse to move money from the bank account of a dispensary customer to Tokken’s bank account. Tokken will keep separate accounts for each dispensary, so the banks do not need to deal directly with them.

While the Treasury Department has provided guidelines for banks that wish to work with marijuana-related businesses, most federally regulated banks refuse to open accounts, since marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Some dispensaries have opened bank accounts under fake names, Zarrad notes. Others offer prepaid cards that can be used to make purchases in dispensaries. The legality of these cards is unclear, the article notes.

While several credit unions and small banks in Colorado have opened accounts for dispensaries, they usually only take on a few marijuana customers, and generally cannot process electronic payments.